Description
This project examined if the implicit stereotype rendering Black-American males as threatening is moderated on the contextual (e.g. city) level by media coverage of crime and dimensions of context diversity. While there is much research demonstrating individual level effects of exposure to stereotype congruent information, there is little research examining how these processes may behave on the cultural level. This study examined implicit stereotypes across Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) as a function of newspaper coverage where the suspect is Black as a proportion of all crime coverage. This relationship was examined for moderation as a function of three dimensions of context diversity: minority representation, variety, and integration. H1 predicted an increase in implicit bias as a result of higher levels of Black crime coverage (BCC). H2 predicted that effects of media coverage would be mitigated for areas with higher levels of context diversity. Media crime coverage was linked to scores on the Race-Weapon IAT across MSAs. Media crime coverage was tracked for one year for each MSA through an archival database. MSAs were chosen through stratified random sampling (n = 24) so as to include all possible combinations of three context diversity measures. IAT participants (n=30,614) were obtained from Project Implicit, an online resource for administering IATs across the country. IAT scores were assessed using multilevel modeling analysis with participants at level 1 and MSAs at level 2. Results showed a significant increase of the implicit stereotype between Blacks and weapons as BCC increased. For context diversity, only variety showed an interactive trend on BCC in that increased levels of variety were associated with a decreased effect of media on implicit stereotypes. These findings suggest that media coverage of Black crime is linked to the implicit association linking Blacks to weapons on the context level, comparable to how the availability of crime exacerbates implicit stereotypes at the individual level. Context level effects may expose a connection between the underlying processes of media and social norms. Context diversity findings indicate that there may be parallel or connected constructs of variety and the social norms that relate to individual cognition.
