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STUDY 1

The goal of Study 1 was to determine how explicitly and implicitly measured attitudes toward Blacks influenced interpretations of a Black film, particularly for judgments involving the role of race in causing the events within the film.

PARTICIPANTS

Participants were recruited from the University of Alabama’s psychology department subject pool. The sample included 110 participants (68 females and 42 males). Ethnicity was self-reported: 89 participants identified themselves as White, 11 identified themselves as Black, and 10 identified themselves as other.

MATERIALS

Film. The experimental film for this study was Remember the Titans. Remember the Titans takes place during the Civil Rights Movement and tells the story of an integrated football team whose popular White coach is replaced by a Black coach. The community is uncomfortable with the integration of the school and football team. [...]

Personalized implicit association test. The implicit association test (IAT) is a reaction time instrument designed to measure implicit bias toward Blacks or Whites. [...] The personalized IAT in the current study used Black and White faces instead of Black and White names. This measure consisted of 12 blocks of trials. The time it took participants to respond to each of the judgments in critical trials was recorded. Blocks 1 and 2 allowed the participants to practice categorizing Black and White faces. Blocks 3 and 4 allowed the participants to practice placing the words into categories of ‘‘I like’’ or ‘‘I don’t like.’’ Blocks 5– 7 combined ‘‘I like’’ with White faces and ‘‘I don’t like’’ with Black faces or combined ‘‘I like’’ with Black faces and ‘‘I don’t like’’ with White faces and were critical blocks for the analyses. The combination was randomly assigned to each participant. Blocks 8 and 9 contained another set of practice trials of White and Black faces in which the labels for the face appear on the opposite side of the screen than they appeared before [...]. Finally, blocks 10–12 were the same as 5–7, except the pairings were switched [...]. [...]

Pro- and anti-black scale. The Pro- and Anti-Black scales are two 10-item scales designed to separately assess positive [...] and negative [...] aspects of White’s attitudes toward Blacks. Individual items on both scales were rated from 3 (strongly disagree) to C3 (strongly agree) [...].

Modern racism scale. [...] The Modern Racism scale is a 7-item scale [...]; the individual items were rated from 3 (strongly disagree) to C3 (strongly agree) with higher scores suggesting stronger explicitly measured negative attitudes toward Blacks.

Internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice scales. The Internal Motivation to Respond without Prejudice scale [...] reflects personal or internalized non-prejudiced standards [...]. The External Motivation to Respond without Prejudice scale [...] reflects social pressures related to non-prejudiced standards [...]. The Internal and External Motivation to Respond without Prejudice scales are 5-item scales. Individual items on both scales were rated from 3 (strongly disagree) to C3 (strongly agree). [...]

Remember the Titans questionnaire. Participants were asked to make judgments about the two global themes of the film, two specific-slow events, and one specific-fast event. [...]

PROCEDURE

The study was conducted across two independent sessions to decrease the chance of the participants becoming sensitized to the experimental hypotheses due to the pretest. The first session of the study was completed online. Participants completed the Pro- and Anti-Black scales, the Modern Racism scale, the Internal and External Motivation to Respond without Prejudice scales, and the Personalized IAT. The explicit attitude measures were given before the implicit attitude measure, as implicitly measured attitudes are more spontaneous and, thus, should not be influenced by taking explicit measures first. During the second session in the lab, participants viewed Remember the Titans in its entirety. Following the film, participants were asked to complete the Remember the Titans questionnaire.

STUDY 2

The goal of Study 2 was to clarify how explicitly and implicitly measured attitudes toward Blacks influenced interpretations of specific events within a film. The film used in this study was Rosewood [...]. [...]

DESIGN

This study was a between-subjects randomized groups design. The independent variables were film condition (Rosewood vs. Boondock Saints) and time (pretest vs. posttest). The dependent variables were explicitly and implicitly measured attitudes and interpretations of the film Rosewood.

PARTICIPANTS

Participants were recruited from the University of Alabama’s psychology department subject pool. The sample included 137 participants (102 females and 35 males). Ethnicity was self-reported: 117 participants identified themselves as White, 9 identified themselves as Black, 10 identified themselves as other, and one participant did not report ethnicity. None of the participants in this study participated in Study 1.

MATERIALS

The following materials were used again in this study and all yielded acceptable reliabilities: Pro-Black scale [...], AntiBlack scale [...], Modern Racism scale [...], External Motivation to Respond without Prejudice scale [...], and Internal Motivation to Respond without Prejudice scale [...]. The Personalized IAT was also used.

Films. The experimental film for this study was Rosewood, which is a dramatic portrayal of a historic event set in two small Florida towns—Rosewood, a predominantly Black town, and Sumner, a predominantly White town. A White woman from Sumner is beaten by her White lover and claims that a Black man attacked her. A group of White men from Sumner seek out the Black man while raiding the town of Rosewood. The weeklong raid ends with several deaths and the destruction of Rosewood. The control film for this study was Boondock Saints. Boondock Saints is a film about two Irish brothers who accidentally kill two members of the Russian mafia. After this incident, the brothers begin a string of mafia murders and both the brothers and police begin to wonder if they are murderers or heroes. [...]

Rosewood questionnaire. Participants in the experimental condition were asked a series of questions about their reaction to the film Rosewood. Participants were asked to rate both central and minor characters’ responsibility for the violent and heroic events of the film. Questions were rated from 0 (not at all responsible) to 6 (very responsible).

PROCEDURE

The study was conducted across two independent sessions to decrease the chance of the participants becoming sensitized to the experimental hypotheses due to the pretest and to decrease response bias on the repeated measures. During the first session, participants completed the Pro- and AntiBlack scales, the Modern Racism scale, the Internal and External Motivation to Respond without Prejudice scales, and the Personalized IAT. Again, the explicit attitude measures were given before the implicit attitude measures, as implicitly measured attitudes are more spontaneous and thus should not be influenced by taking explicit measures first. Participants returned to the lab seven days later to take part in the second portion of the study. When participants arrived, they viewed either the experimental film (Rosewood) or the control film (Boondock Saints) in its entirety. Following the film, participants in the experimental group completed the Rosewood questionnaire. All participants then completed the Pro- and Anti-Black scales, the Modern Racism scale, and the Personalized IAT for a second time.