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Using Celebrity News Stories to Effectively Reduce Racial/Ethnic Prejudice
Author(s) -
Ramasubramanian Srividya
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.618
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1540-4560
pISSN - 0022-4537
DOI - 10.1111/josi.12100
Subject(s) - social psychology , prejudice (legal term) , outgroup , ethnic group , psychology , ingroups and outgroups , harmony (color) , impression formation , perception , sociology , social perception , art , neuroscience , anthropology , visual arts
This article argues that exposure to admirable media celebrities from racial/ethnic outgroups is an effective, proactive, and viable strategy for prejudice reduction and intergroup harmony. It uses mediated contact and exemplification theories to demonstrate that reading news stories about likable outgroup media personalities who serve as counter‐stereotypic exemplars can subtly modify racial attitudes, which are malleable and context‐sensitive. Specifically, results from a between‐participants experiment (N = 88) show that exposure to news stories about counter‐stereotypic African American media personalities as compared to stereotypical ones reduces stereotypical perceptions and symbolic racist beliefs of White Americans about African Americans. Furthermore, these favorable attitudes translate into an increased willingness to support affirmative action policies.