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Alcohol-related cues promote automatic racial bias
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Alcohol-related cues promote automatic racial bias

Elena V. Stepanova, Bruce D. Bartholow, J. Scott Saults and Ronald S. Friedman
Journal of experimental social psychology, Vol.48(4), pp.905-911
07/01/2012
DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.02.006
PMCID: PMC3392947
PMID: 22798699
url
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/3392947View
Open Access

Abstract

Previous research has shown that alcohol consumption can increase the expression of race bias by impairing control-related processes. The current study tested whether simple exposure to alcohol-related images can also increase bias, but via a different mechanism. Participants viewed magazine ads for either alcoholic or nonalcoholic beverages prior to completing Payne's (2001) Weapons Identification Task (WIT). As predicted, participants primed with alcohol ads exhibited greater race bias in the WIT than participants primed with neutral beverages. Process dissociation analyses indicated that these effects were due to automatic (relative to controlled) processes having a larger influence on behavior among alcohol-primed relative to neutral-primed participants. Structural equation modeling further showed that the alcohol-priming effect was mediated by increases in the influence of automatic associations on behavior. These data suggest an additional pathway by which alcohol can potentially harm inter-racial interactions, even when no beverage is consumed. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
 Psychology Psychology, Social Social Sciences

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