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Racial Stereotypes Essay Theoretically, the present work examined the role of personal endorsement of cultural stereotypes. Devine (1989) proposed that because of the repeated and virtually unavoidable exposure to pervasive cultural stereotypes, both high and low prejudiced individuals will automatically activate these representations when they are presented with representations of those groups regardless of their personal level of endorsement of these stereotypes (i. e. , personal stereotypes). Recently, Lepore and Brown (1997) highlighted an important distinction between stereotype priming and category priming. Stereotype priming involves cueing stereotypic characteristics (e. g. , lazy) directly, with or without the category label (e. g. , Black). Categorization priming occurs when only the category (e. g. , Black) is cued in isolation of any stereotypic characteristics. Lepore and Brown noted that Devines (1989, Study 2) research involved both stereotypic priming and category priming simultaneously, and they observed, Many primes had clear negative connotations that could have directly cued hostility (p. 276). The absence of differences in the responses of high and low prejudiced participants in the Devine study may thus have occurred because of the direct activation of semantic associations involved in stereotype priming rather than because of a close association between the category alone and the stereotype. Lepore and Brown (1997) further argued that high-and low-prejudice peoples representations of the social group may not differ in terms of content (at least for stereotype knowledge) but stronger links may have developed for different characteristics (p. 277). Lepore and Brown reasoned that, as a consequence of this differential strength of associative links with the category, high and low prejudiced people would show divergent automatic stereotype activation as a function of category priming. Consistent with their hypothesis, using Devines (1989, Study 2) priming and subsequent impression formation procedure, Lepore and Brown found that when only the category was primed, high prejudiced participants showed evidence of automatic negative stereotype activation, whereas low prejudiced participants did not (and, in fact, tended to show activation of positive associates). When stereotype priming was involved, however, both high and low prejudiced participants demonstrated comparable levels of stereotype activation. The present research further investigated this theoretical issue by directly examining the relation between personal endorsement of cultural stereotypes (shared beliefs about the characteristics possessed by members of a social group) and the activation of these stereotypes within a category priming paradigm. Because participants were given the time and opportunity to ascribe stereotypic traits deliberately to the particular categories, this process is considered to be controlled. Thus, the degree of the participants endorsement of the cultural stereotypes was expected to vary as a function of prejudice (Devine, 1989; Esses et al. , 1993; Lepore Brown, 1997). Participants activation of cultural stereotypes, alternatively, was assessed with a word pronunciation task. Specifically, participants, who were classified as high or low in prejudice, were presented with a category prime (Black, White, or CCC [a neutral baseline]) followed by a positive or negative Black stereotypic target word or nonstereotypic target word. Their task was simply to pronounce the target word. Response latency was the dependent measure. A number of studies have revealed that this procedure may produce a particularly sensitive measure of automatic processing because the paradigm does not foster task-specific strategies that can obscure the effects of automaticity (Balota Chumbly, 1984; Balota Lorch, 1986; Bargh, Chaiken, Raymond, Hymes, 1996; Joordens Besner, 1992; Ratcliff McKoon, 1988). Conditions for automatic and controlled processing were induced in this paradigm by varying the length of time between the onset of the presentation of the prime and the presentation of the target word. Under short SOAs (stimulus onset asynchronies) (300 ms), responses were assumed to be automatic because the stimuli were presented too briefly for participants to engage, focus, and commit attention intentionally to their responses (Neely, 1977, 1991). Long SOAs (2,000 ms) were assumed to permit more controlled processes because participants had sufficient time to manipulate their responses strategically. In the present study, the repeated presentation of racial category primes and stereotypic traits makes the racial focus of the task salient, which normally produces motivations to respond in socially desirable, unbiased ways (Dovidio Fazio, 1992), even in simple response latency tasks (Messick Mackie, 1989).