Are You What You Read? Predicting Implicit Attitudes to Immigration Based on Linguistic Distributional Cues From Newspaper Readership; A Pre-registered Study
The implicit association test (IAT) measures bias towards often controversial topics (e.g., race, religion), while newspapers typically take strong positive/negative stances on such issues. In a pre-registered study, we developed and administered an immigration IAT to readers of the Daily Mail (a ty...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2019-05-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00842/full |
| _version_ | 1828900282322386944 |
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| author | Dermot Lynott Michael Walsh Tony McEnery Louise Connell Liam Cross Kerry O’Brien |
| author_facet | Dermot Lynott Michael Walsh Tony McEnery Louise Connell Liam Cross Kerry O’Brien |
| author_sort | Dermot Lynott |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The implicit association test (IAT) measures bias towards often controversial topics (e.g., race, religion), while newspapers typically take strong positive/negative stances on such issues. In a pre-registered study, we developed and administered an immigration IAT to readers of the Daily Mail (a typically anti-immigration publication) and the Guardian (a typically pro-immigration publication) newspapers. IAT materials were constructed based on co-occurrence frequencies from each newspapers’ website for immigration-related terms (migrant/immigrant) and positive/negative attributes (skilled/unskilled). Target stimuli showed stronger negative associations with immigration concepts in the Daily Mail compared to the Guardian, and stronger positive associations in the Guardian corpus compared to the Daily Mail corpus. Consistent with these linguistic distributional differences, Daily Mail readers exhibited a larger IAT bias, revealing stronger negative associations to immigration concepts compared to Guardian readers. This difference in overall bias was not fully explained by other variables, and raises the possibility that exposure to biased language contributes to biased implicit attitudes. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-13T15:45:35Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-e9231906fca44de1b6666e24f724ffd5 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-13T15:45:35Z |
| publishDate | 2019-05-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-e9231906fca44de1b6666e24f724ffd52022-12-21T23:39:43ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782019-05-011010.3389/fpsyg.2019.00842426621Are You What You Read? Predicting Implicit Attitudes to Immigration Based on Linguistic Distributional Cues From Newspaper Readership; A Pre-registered StudyDermot Lynott0Michael Walsh1Tony McEnery2Louise Connell3Liam Cross4Kerry O’Brien5Department of Psychology, Fylde College, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, United KingdomInstitute for Natural Language Processing, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, GermanyLinguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, United KingdomDepartment of Psychology, Fylde College, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, United KingdomDepartment of Psychology, School of Health and Wellbeing, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, United KingdomSchool of Social Sciences, Monash University, Caulfield East, VIC, AustraliaThe implicit association test (IAT) measures bias towards often controversial topics (e.g., race, religion), while newspapers typically take strong positive/negative stances on such issues. In a pre-registered study, we developed and administered an immigration IAT to readers of the Daily Mail (a typically anti-immigration publication) and the Guardian (a typically pro-immigration publication) newspapers. IAT materials were constructed based on co-occurrence frequencies from each newspapers’ website for immigration-related terms (migrant/immigrant) and positive/negative attributes (skilled/unskilled). Target stimuli showed stronger negative associations with immigration concepts in the Daily Mail compared to the Guardian, and stronger positive associations in the Guardian corpus compared to the Daily Mail corpus. Consistent with these linguistic distributional differences, Daily Mail readers exhibited a larger IAT bias, revealing stronger negative associations to immigration concepts compared to Guardian readers. This difference in overall bias was not fully explained by other variables, and raises the possibility that exposure to biased language contributes to biased implicit attitudes.https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00842/fullIATlanguageimplicit attitudesbiasimplicit association test |
| spellingShingle | Dermot Lynott Michael Walsh Tony McEnery Louise Connell Liam Cross Kerry O’Brien Are You What You Read? Predicting Implicit Attitudes to Immigration Based on Linguistic Distributional Cues From Newspaper Readership; A Pre-registered Study Frontiers in Psychology IAT language implicit attitudes bias implicit association test |
| title | Are You What You Read? Predicting Implicit Attitudes to Immigration Based on Linguistic Distributional Cues From Newspaper Readership; A Pre-registered Study |
| title_full | Are You What You Read? Predicting Implicit Attitudes to Immigration Based on Linguistic Distributional Cues From Newspaper Readership; A Pre-registered Study |
| title_fullStr | Are You What You Read? Predicting Implicit Attitudes to Immigration Based on Linguistic Distributional Cues From Newspaper Readership; A Pre-registered Study |
| title_full_unstemmed | Are You What You Read? Predicting Implicit Attitudes to Immigration Based on Linguistic Distributional Cues From Newspaper Readership; A Pre-registered Study |
| title_short | Are You What You Read? Predicting Implicit Attitudes to Immigration Based on Linguistic Distributional Cues From Newspaper Readership; A Pre-registered Study |
| title_sort | are you what you read predicting implicit attitudes to immigration based on linguistic distributional cues from newspaper readership a pre registered study |
| topic | IAT language implicit attitudes bias implicit association test |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00842/full |
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