Schmidt & Nosek (2010): Implicit (and explicit) racial attitudes barely changed during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and early presidency

As a high-status, omnipresent Black exemplar, Barack Obama and his rise to the presidency of the United States may have induced a cultural shift in implicit racial attitudes, much like controlled exposures to positive Black and negative White exemplars have done in the laboratory (Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001). With a very large, heterogeneous sample collected daily for 2.5 years prior to, during and after the 2008 Election season (N = 479,405), we observed very little evidence of systematic change in implicit and explicit racial attitudes overall, within subgroups, or for particular notable dates. Malleability of racial attitudes – implicit or explicit – may be conditional on more features than the mere presence of high-status counter-stereotypic exemplars.作为一位地位显赫、广受瞩目的黑人典范，巴拉克·奥巴马及其当选美国总统的历程，或许如同实验室中开展的控制性接触正面黑人典范与负面白人典范的实验（Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001）一般，引发了内隐种族态度（implicit racial attitudes）的文化变迁。本研究在2008年大选季前后的2.5年周期内每日收集样本，最终获得规模庞大且异质性丰富的数据集（有效样本量N=479,405）；但无论从整体层面、亚群体维度，还是针对特定标志性日期，均未观测到内隐与外显种族态度（explicit racial attitudes）发生系统性变化的可靠证据。种族态度（无论内隐抑或外显）的可塑性，其影响条件或许不止于高地位反刻板印象典范（counter-stereotypic exemplars）的存在，而是涉及更多元的影响因素。