Rh. Fazio et Bc. Dunton, CATEGORIZATION BY RACE - THE IMPACT OF AUTOMATIC AND CONTROLLED COMPONENTS OF RACIAL PREJUDICE, Journal of experimental social psychology, 33(5), 1997, pp. 451-470
The present research examined the influence of both automatic and cont
rolled processes related to racial prejudice on the categorization of
stimulus persons by race. Participants judged the similarity of photos
of individuals who varied in race, gender, and occupation. These simi
larity ratings were subjected to a multidimensional scaling procedure.
The degree to which individuals weighted race in judging similarity w
as found to increase as a function of the extent to which race was att
itude-evoking for the individual and to decrease as a function of moti
vation to control seemingly prejudiced reactions. It is suggested that
the attention of individuals for whom attitudes were automatically ac
tivated in response to Black faces was automatically drawn to the race
information, but that individuals motivated to control prejudiced rea
ctions actively resisted weighting race heavily. Examination of the la
tencies with which the similarity judgments were made provided support
for this account of the process underlying categorization by race. (C
) 1997 Academic Press.