LINGUISTIC MASKING DEVICES AND INTERGROUP BEHAVIOR - FURTHER EVIDENCEOF AN INTERGROUP LINGUISTIC BIAS

This research extends growing work an the interplay between language a nd social cognition by examining the use of linguistic masking devices in an intergroup context. The authors conducted three studies to expl ore the use of four lower-level masking devices identified as influent ial in creating differing versions of reality. In Study I, African Ame rican and Caucasian students read one news brief involving an encounte r between Caucasian police officers and African American males and the n were asked to generate headlines describing the event. These headlin es were content analyzed according to permutation truncation generaliz ation, and nominalization. Results were inconclusive, and a follow-up study (Study 2) examined the differential use of these masking devices in headlines written by Caucasian police officers and African America n respondents. A final study was conducted (Study 3) to rule out the p ossibility that the differential use of linguistic masking devices was due to factors other than intergroup bias.