Indirect Priming Measure of Racism
(Fazio et al., 1995 ).
Variable
Although other measures predated the IAT, they have proved less controversial. Five other measures appear
in one review ( Fazio & Olson, 2003 ), but this section focuses on one, based on the MODE (motivation-and-oppor-
tunity-determine) model ( Fazio, 1990; Fazio & Towles-Schwen, 1999 ). The concept holds that attitudes can influ-
ence responses by more automatic or more controlled routes, the latter when motivation and resources allow
more deliberation. For present purposes, the attendant measurement focuses on the relatively automatic, sponta-
neous, or indirect racial-attitude measure. This involves priming participants with Black or White-related stimuli
and measuring the facilitated speed of response to similarly evaluated race-unrelated stimuli.
Description
In the original study ( Fazio et al., 1995 ; see below), with an Asian experimenter, White and Black participants,
pretested as scoring in the top or bottom 10% on the Modern Racism Scale ( McConahay, 1986 ), first provided
baseline response latencies to judging common adjectives (e.g., ‘pleasant,’ ‘awful’) as good or bad. Second, under
the guise of a face-learning task, participants merely viewed 16 grey-scale yearbook photos of White, Black,
Hispanic, and Asian male and female faces. Third, participants performed a yes /C0no speeded recognition test of
these photos. Finally, in the actual priming task, described as combining the previous tasks, in effect multi-task-
ing, participants viewed 48 color photographs of undergraduates (Black, White, Asian, Hispanic; male, female),
for 315 msecs each, then after a 135 msecs interval, followed by one of 24 valenced adjectives. As in the first task,
participants had to indicate as quickly and accurately as possible whether the adjective was positive or negative.
Two subsequent tasks (color-photo recognition, face-attractiveness ratings) are less relevant, except to bolster the
cover story. Finally, a new (blind-to-racism-score) experimenter, who was Black, debriefed participants, later rat-
ing their friendliness and interest, and finally asking them to take an allegedly unrelated survey about race-
related riots in Los Angeles.
The speed of identifying the adjectives’ valence in the fourth task could be facilitated from baseline (the first
task) if the participant had a negative evaluation of Black faces and a positive evaluation of White faces, followed
by a respectively like-valence adjective. This indeed proved significant, with an effect size ( r-to-ztransformed)
for White students of /C0.26, and for Black students of .33, indicating ingroup positivity and outgroup negativity,
especially for the White students, regardless of score on the Modern Racism Scale (similar to the Symbolic
Racism Scale, above).
Sample
The original study used 53 White and Black participants, pretested as scoring in the top or bottom 10% on the
Modern Racism Scale. To this review’s knowledge, nonstudent samples have not been used because of the com-
plexity and sensitivity of the required controls.
Reliability
Internal Consistency
The major published internal consistency data appear to be split-half correlations under distinct conditions: (a)
.04 for the original measure and (b) .39 when participants were forced to categorize the face-photo primes by race
(Olson & Fazio, 2003 ).
Validity
Convergent/Concurrent
Implicit (IAT) and indirect (these) measures correlate only sporadically ( Fazio & Olson, 2003; Schnabel et al.,
2008 ). For example, across studies, 300 participants showed nonsignificant and essentially zero correlations
(Olson & Fazio, 2003 ). Indirect attitudes may typically focus more on exemplar-level processing, whereas the IAT
and a category-oriented version of indirect attitudes correlate more highly. In line with this concrete-experience
account, indirect racial attitudes correlate with believing that one’s racial attitudes are based on relatively recent
personal experiences ( Towles-Schwen & Fazio, 2001 ).697 OVERVIEW OF THE MEASURES
VI. SOCIOCULTURAL INTERACTION AND CONFLICT