Effects of cognitive, affective, and behavioural anti-racism advertisements

Experimental designs were used to examine the effects of anti-racism messages on prejudice and whether the impact of messages depends on viewers' prior ambivalence toward ethnic minorities. Three types of anti-racism video advertisements were examined: a message presenting factual arguments in favour of ethnic minorities, focusing on people's beliefs about the groups; a message inspiring positive feelings about ethnic minority groups in message viewers; and a message highlighting behaviours that are non-prejudiced. Seven lab experiments and four internet experiments examined the effects of message variants on explicit and implicit measures of attitude toward ethnic minorities. Three experiments found that factually oriented messages can elicit more positive intergroup attitudes, although these effects occurred only for explicit measures of attitude. Another experiment found that prejudice can be reduced by pairing ethnic groups with positive emotion. Self-report prejudice can be reduced using rhetorical questions to make salient viewers' positive past behaviours toward ethnic minorities. Two advertisements modelling anti-racist behaviours actually increased prejudice, although less so among ambivalent individuals. The results yielded valuable clues about how to alter prejudice.