Etnisk in-gruppsfavorisering vid semantisk priming av ansikten: en empirisk studie av dess ERP-korrelat hos svenska studenter

Sammanfattning: Many studies have been conducted investigating automatically activated attitudes towards ethnic groups, where the main measure has been reaction time. Mainly, these studies have looked at relative preferences for ethnic in-groups over ethnic out-groups. The present work looks at whether the relative preference is due to disfavoring the out-group, favoring the in group, or a combination of both. In addition, the works uses an ERP methodology, where a particular component of electrical brain activity – the N400-component, was the main measure. This component is known to be sensitive to whether a stimulus is congruent or not with expectation. Expectation was induced by priming the participant with a face from an ethnic in- or out-group – specifically of individuals that appears to be from the Middle East or the North Europe. The face was followed by an adjective connoting either cold or warm traits, that could be considered either congruent or incongruent with the activated stereotype. The results showed a relative preference for the ethnic in-group over the ethnic out-group. The effect was driven by a favored attitude towards the in-group rather than disfavoring the out-group, which went against our expectation.