IMPLICIT LEARNING AIDS THE FOUNDATION AND REINFORCEMENT OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES

Introduction

Implicit learning is defined as knowledge about a given stimulus acquired below the level of consciousness (Reber, 1989). The focus of this article is to explore how implicit learning and priming, which is the ability to recognize stimuli by previously presenting the stimuli or similar stimuli (Savage, Lieven, and Theakston, 2006), play a role in forming racial stereotype constructs. Some research has shown that priming is possible in children as young as 4-years-old as documented by Savage et al. The purpose of my research is to better understand the phenomenon of implicit learning, to find out how robust the effects of implicit learning can be, and in turn explain how implicit learning and priming contribute to shaping our social perception on race. One can argue that the explicit teaching of racial superiority has by in large disappeared from mainstream society in the United States, yet strong racial stereotypes toward Blacks in the U.S. still remain and are possibly being taught implicitly (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, and Jackson, 2008).

Cognitive research plays a significant role in the topic of implicit learning and stereotypes because it provides insight on how we learn the aforementioned constructs and how early in life we are capable of learning and reinforcing this information. Although implicit learning and priming are basic concepts of our cognitive processes, they are critical to learning coupled with what we are taught culturally. First I will share foundational information about the concepts of implicit learning and priming and then discuss how these processes can facilitate the learning and reinforcement of racial stereotypes.

Implicit Learning

The term implicit learning first surfaced over four decades ago while attempting to study the concept of intuition, the sense of knowing what is right or wrong in a given situation without a conscious reason for the sense of knowing the appropriate approach (Reber, 1989). Reber argued that one arrives at an intuitive state after implicit learning is experienced. As noted before, Reber defined implicit learning as the acquisition of knowledge below the level of consciousness. In an early study Reber exposed participants to diagrams of strings of letters with directional arrows and loops connecting them and told participants they were engaging in a memory experiment. They were not told they were attempting to memorize diagrams of finite-grammar and they contained rules for stinging letters together. Reber reported that participants under the diagrams containing rules condition showed an increased ability for processing and memorizing strings of letters compared to the control group which was simply exposed to non-ordered strings of letters. Additionally, the experimental group was able to use what was learned (implicitly) about the grammar rules to discriminate between strings of letters that conformed to the rules and those that did not, providing support for the idea that they learned the rules implicitly. One important factor that helps support this idea is that the diagrams and grammar rules were rather complex which eliminates the argument of discerning the rules and strings by chance or by their simplicity. What is most important to remember about the process of implicit learning is that it occurs outside of awareness, it is capable of grasping complex and abstract concepts, and the acquired implicit knowledge may be used without awareness of acquisition as noted by Reber.

Priming

Priming can be viewed as the vehicle used for implicit learning. A priming effect occurs when the exposure of stimuli facilitates the reproduction or recall of that stimuli or similar stimuli at a later time without a conscious recollection (Savage, Lieven, and Theakston, 2006). This should not be confused with the rehearsal of stimuli; priming is a rather casual exposure to the stimuli that can be in some instances as short as a fraction of a second. The idea behind priming is that mere exposure to certain stimuli will aid inferences about associated stimuli independent from consciousness which leads to the idea of implicitly learning something. By priming 4-year-old children with varied passive sentences, Savage et al. were able to show that lexical and structural priming was effective at an early age and it aided children in acquiring language. Savage et al. contend that the reinforcement of primers is a determining factor in implicit learning coupled with variations of the primers. It is important to keep in mind that both implicit learning and priming are natural cognitive processes. Now that there is a basic understanding of implicit learning and priming, I will now shift to how these processes aid the development of constructs, particularly the formation of racial stereotypes.

Making the Connections

Since there is evidence that shows that children use implicit learning for language acquisition as early as 4-years of age (Savage, Lieven, and Theakston, 2006), it can be said that this process may be used to conceptualize even more complex constructs through childhood development. Through the frequent exposure to information children also learn how to make personality trait attributions (Boseovski and Lee, 2006). For example, if a child observes a frequent behavior such as a boy screaming at other children, the observing child may conclude that the boy is rude and the boy’s behavior may be predicted in future scenarios as suggested by Boseovski and Lee. The key factor here is the exposure to the stimuli which suggest that the surrounding environment is important to what is implicitly learned. Negative racial associations towards African Americans are learned early on in life and are reinforced over time through socialization processes that are built into our culture (Rudman, Ashmore, and Gary, 2001). I will later elaborate on the influence of media on racial stereotypes.

There is a considerable body of evidence that shows how we are constantly exposed to positive associations with the color white and negative associations with the color black (Smith-McLallen, Johnson, Dovidio, and Pearson, 2006; Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, and Jackson, 2008; Maher, Herbst, Childs, and Finn, 2008). Smith-McLallen et al. highlight the fact that we are taught that early on in life that White is normally associated with ideas of cleanliness, purity, and goodness while Black is negatively associated with concepts such as ungodliness, evil, bad luck, and death. Smith-McLallen et al. contend that these associations help form color biases preferring the color white over black and these biases can converge into racial biases. Smith-McLallen et al. further note that researchers should be cautious about labeling conditions in experiments as black or white as they may also lead to bias results. An important fact that Smith-McLallen et al. point out is that regardless of their color, people tend to have a preference for the color white and have negative associations with the color black. This observation is true for Black and White children as young as 3-years-old and adults as noted by Williams, Tucker, and Dunham (as cited by Smith-McLallen et al., 2006). What becomes clearer here is that we are exposed to these associations very early on in our lives. These are the beginning stages of implicitly forming racial stereotypes which are then reinforced over time.

So how do these positive and negative associations are reinforce over time? How do they translate into racial associations? One possible answer is the constant exposure to these associations through media such as television. Leonhardt and Kerwin (as cited by Maher, Herbst, Childs, and Finn, 2008) note that children watch 20,000 to 40,000 television commercials per year. Maher et al. also state that African-American and Hispanic children tend to watch on average three or more hours of television per day than do Caucasian children. Given the time children spend in front of the television, it is safe to say that it becomes an influence on their ideas and how they view the world as noted by Maher et al. According to Duckitt (as cited by Maher et al., 2008) media conveys a significant amount of ethnic prejudices which include negative stereotyping minorities and under representation. Maher et al. point out that children are susceptible to racial stereotypes presented in television advertising and programming. Television becomes an instrument of implicit learning through the constant reinforcement of messages being conveyed which facilitate biases and stereotypes once real world interactions occur. Although television programming may not explicitly teach that for example, African-Americans are aggressive and uneducated, or that Hispanics are all illegal immigrants, these racial associations may be implicitly learned by reinforcing them through fictional depictions and applied in real settings even when their representations are not confirmed. As noted by Maher et al. the over representation of minorities in negative roles compared to the general population help reinforce their stereotypes.

Although stereotypes are a form of heuristic that can help shorten our decision making time (Dodson, Darragh, and Williams, 2008), they must be constantly regulated; their strength can lead to memory distortions and false recollections. Dodson et al. posit that by being aware of one’s own stereotypes one can refrain from making attributional errors based on ones stereotyping tendencies. Additionally, the use of inappropriate stereotypes can be reduced by increasing awareness and power over outcomes (Weick and Guinote, 2008). Weick and Guinote contend that powerful individuals such as CEOs or presidents can indeed make decisions independently from their own biases and stereotypes but that a momentary subjective experience may influence their decisions. For example, a confirmed stereotype may interfere and influence their judgment. The argument learned from Weick and Guinote is not necessarily holding a position of power per se, but being in an empowering position of making certain decisions free from preconceived notions. Regulating our own stereotypes, particularly the ones that involve judging or categorizing others, is critical to better social interactions. Pivotal to regulating our stereotypes is recognizing that they are present within us. Honest self-examination is necessary to arrive at this juncture.

A complete and well structured stereotype can be prompted by a single word (Anolli, Zurloni, and Riva, 2006). Anolli et al. analyzed a number of political debates that occurred during the latest Italian elections and found that politicians communicated their thoughts about their political affiliations (in-group or out-group) in stereotypical concepts rather than attribution traits. This is important to note because this form of communication is not specific to politicians alone, it may be used by any person or group who intends to convey a message larger than the expressed words. Anderson and Klatzky (as cited by Anolli et al., 2006) define a stereotype as articulated conception of a particular group consisting of a cluster of attributes that allows one to draw inferences specific to that group. As asserted by Anolli et al., this definition allows for the essence of a stereotype to be condensed into a categorical noun. For example, rather than describing a person with adjectives such as talented, athletic, or respectful, one can use nouns such as leader, hero, or maverick. Descriptive nouns trigger a host of attributes associated with the noun which means that good or bad stereotypes can be captured in them. This linguistic function is important in relation to stereotypes because once a stereotype is formed it could be easily prompted by a noun. In racial terms, some of the adjectives associated with Blacks or African-Americans are “violent, threatening, criminal, unintelligent, uneducated, lazy, poor, athletic, and musical” (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, and Jackson, 2008, p. 294). Note that several nouns used to represent a social group can still evoke the same stereotypical construct. In other words bias people would have the same idea about Black people whether they refer to them as Blacks, African-Americans, or a racial slur. Of course avoiding explicit racial remarks conceal people’s racial biases to some extent. Once the foundational work of implicitly priming and reinforcing negative associations with the color black and more benevolent associations with the color white which are then converged to social groups associations through media depictions (television and radio), they can then be elicited through categorical nouns.

With regard to the persistence of these negative associations with blackness which are implicitly taught and reinforced overtime, research suggest that people implicitly hold racial stereotypical expectations which can influence their own social behavior towards others (Hugenberg and Bodenhausen, 2003). Using implicit association tasks, Hugenberg and Bodenhausen found in their study that European-American participants who showed higher levels of implicit prejudice were also quicker in perceiving anger on African-American faces and took longer in distinguishing a non-threatening African-American facial expression. The implication of Hugenberg and Bodenhausen is that people’s preconceived notion about another social group influences their attitude toward that social group and also influences social interaction so that members of that social group behave towards them in a manner that confirms their beliefs about the social group. For example, if one perceives a person as being aggressive, then one may treat this person in a manner that will make this person behave aggressively. Information learned implicitly about a group of people, truthful or unfounded, affects social interactions with that group.

In another study with greater social implications Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, and Jackson (2008) argue that although the explicit associations between Blacks and apes have been all but removed from society, there are still implicit associations between Blacks and apes that serve as a dehumanizing factor which in turn plays a role in peoples judgment in associating crime with Blacks and or condoning violence against them. Goff et al. contend that early illustrations of the evolutionary spectrum among primates contained monkeys and apes at the lower end of the evolution chain and “Whites” at the highest end indicating full and complete evolution and that people of African descent were believed to fall somewhere between simian and the deformed in that very spectrum. Although this link between Blacks and apes has no validity and is no longer taught, Goff et al. argue that the stereotypes for Blacks in the United States have only increased negatively (violent, threatening, criminal, unintelligent, and uneducated in addition to previous stereotypes such as lazy, aggressive, dim, and hypersexual) and they influence perception and behavior towards Blacks. Therefore Goff et al. hypothesized that the association between Blacks and apes is still present through the convergence of stereotypes and other implicit reinforcers such as the use of ape-like descriptive qualities to describe actions by Blacks. Through a series of studies using IAT, Goff et al. found that White participants as well as non-White participants were able to identify apes in degraded images that improved frame by frame, in fewer frames when they were subliminally primed with Black faces; they did not find an effect at all when participants were primed with White faces. This is yet another way in which implicit learning and priming play a significant role in forming racial stereotypes which influences social interaction and affects multidirectional behavior.

Discussion and Conclusion

It is important to point out that this article only focused on the role of implicit learning and priming on the formation of racial stereotypes and the media such as television help reinforce these stereotypes. Other factors also contribute to this phenomenon such as parental rearing, classroom socialization, and other media such as printed media, the internet, and radio. These factors as well as many other unmentioned factors are all worthy of study. Because multiple environmental factor play a role in the formation of racial stereotypes, causation cannot be claimed by a single factor. The issue of anti-White sentiments was not covered in this article because namely minorities, particularly African-Americans, are largely under represented in television roles and are repeatedly depicted in stereotypical roles (Maher, Herbst, Childs, and Finn, 2008). Additionally, the negative stereotypes associated with African-Americans have significant social implications in terms of how they are viewed and treated even through the judicial system (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, and Jackson, 2008).

After evaluating how the basic processes of implicit learning and priming are an intricate part of how we acquire language (Savage, Lieven, and Theakston, 2006) and other complex constructs throughout our development, we can also see that these very processes do play a role in the formation of racial stereotypes (Goff, Eberhardt, Williams, and Jackson, 2008) and that they are reinforced over time through our environment (Maher, Herbst, Childs, and Finn, 2008). In the same way environmental forces such as television have contributed to reinforcing negative racial stereotypes they can equally contribute to form positive representations that can counter deeply rooted negative stereotypes. A worthy study would be one that would correlate positive representations of minorities in television with children’s racial attitudes to determine if stereotypes can be positively changed over time. Of course, in order to conduct such a study the number of representations of minorities in important and positive roles would have to increase significantly. There is some research that suggests that implicit biases and stereotypes can be changed through affective processes of self-awareness (Rudman, Ashmore, and Gary, 2001). The beginning of rectifying unfair stereotypes towards minorities, particularly African Americans, is being personally aware that these stereotypes exist and that we may carry biases even if we hold an egalitarian view of ourselves. By self-examining our intrapersonal beliefs on race we can regulate our stereotypes and refrain from making harmful and unfair generalizations.

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