Social psychology refers to a branch of study that focuses on people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors due to the influence of imagined, presence of other people. The thoughts and feelings of others is determined by psychological variables that can be measured in human beings. The main focus of social psychology is the examination of social factors which contribute to certain behaviors.
Priming refers to the process of being exposed to stimuli which results into a response. Priming takes place due to perceptual, semantic, or conceptual repetition of stimuli. It is the tendency of a person to develop the perception of an object which is related to the one that is mentioned during a conversation or a description. The impacts of priming have long-lasting impacts and even more than recognition of memory.
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This study examined the influence of racial cues on the perceptions and the ability to identify weapons. This is based on the idea that racial bias is a contributing factor to confrontation. It was aimed at adopting Jacoby’s (1001) process dissociation procedure (PDP) in the analysis of the impact of racial cues on the ability of one to use visual cues in the identification of weapons in a priming paradigm
Hypothesis for the study: There racial cues have an impact on a person’s use of visual cues during the identification of priming paradigm.
Priming studies have shown that primes associated with group members facilitate responses to words that are negatively valenced and stereotyped. This hypothesis is based on the idea that White participants have the ability to respond faster to positive target words that have been paired with Black primes, in comparison with Black-positive or White-negative pairs.
The methodology used in experiment 1 was recruitment of participants to identify guns faster under priming with Black faces in comparison to White faces. It also involved asking the participants to respond quickly, resulting in racial bias in the manner in which they shifted towards accuracy.
The findings showed that the participants misidentified tools as guns in more frequent incidents during priming with a Black face compared with priming with a White face.
It was concluded that motivation to control prejudice has a moderating impact on the association between explicit prejudice and automatic bias.
Reference
Payne, B. K. (2001). Prejudice and perception: the role of automatic and controlled processes in misperceiving a weapon. Journal of personality and social psychology , 81 (2), 181.
