Type of Document	Master's Thesis
Author	Miller, Ben
Author's Email Address	bmill45@lsu.edu
URN	etd-07052012-203541
Title	Man without a country: How character complexity primes racial stereotypes
Degree	Master of Mass Communication (M.M.C.)
Department	Mass Communication
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Sanders, Meghan Committee Chair Weber, Christopher Committee Member DeFleur, Margaret Committee Member
Keywords	character complexity priming stereotypes
Date of Defense	2012-07-28
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract This study examined the role character complexity plays in racial attitudes of television viewers. Previous research suggests that stereotypes and counter-stereotypes play vastly different roles in how people process information. Stereotypes act as automatic cues that call up pre-made judgments upon exposure to them. Meanwhile, counter-stereotypes actually work on a conscious processing level, forcing viewers to think more deeply about individuals when presented with them, skipping the automatic recall mechanism all together. By layering counter-stereotypes and stereotypes together in the same stimulus, this study examined whether the existence of there would be an appreciable difference between viewers exposed to solely stereotypes or both using both implicit and explicit measures. To investigate the relationships between character complexity and racial attitudes, this study used a 2 x 2 factorial experimental design featuring 99 students and the data was analyzed using factorial ANOVAs. In addition to the character complexity variable, an additional exposure variable measured differences between single or repeated exposures of the stimulus videos. This experiment used an Implicit Association Test, a Positive Attitudes Towards Blacks scale and a Black Stereotypes scale to measure racial attitudes. Findings show there was no difference in positive, negative or implicit attitudes between the two complexity conditions. And furthermore, there was also no demonstrated difference between the single- and repeated-exposure conditions.
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