Implicit Bias Reflects the Company That Words Keep
In everyday language, concepts appear alongside (i.e., collocate with) related concepts. Societal biases often emerge in these collocations; e.g., female (vs. male) names collocate with art- (vs. science-) related concepts, and African American (vs. White American) names collocate with negative (vs....
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2022-06-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.871221/full |
| _version_ | 1828333506721218560 |
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| author | David J. Hauser Norbert Schwarz |
| author_facet | David J. Hauser Norbert Schwarz |
| author_sort | David J. Hauser |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | In everyday language, concepts appear alongside (i.e., collocate with) related concepts. Societal biases often emerge in these collocations; e.g., female (vs. male) names collocate with art- (vs. science-) related concepts, and African American (vs. White American) names collocate with negative (vs. positive) concepts. It is unknown whether such collocations merely reflect societal biases or contribute to them. Concepts that are themselves neutral in valence but nevertheless collocate with valenced concepts provide a unique opportunity to address this question. For example, when asked, most people evaluate the concept “cause” as neutral, but “cause” is frequently followed by negative concepts (e.g., death, pain, and trouble). We use such semantically prosodic concepts to test the influence of collocation on the emergence of implicit bias: do neutral concepts that frequently collocate with valenced concepts have corresponding implicit bias? In evaluative priming tasks, participants evaluated positive/negative nouns (Study 1) or pictures (Study 2) after seeing verb primes that were (a) strongly valenced (e.g., hate and comfort), (b) neutral in valence but collocated with valenced concepts in corpora (e.g., ease and gain), or (c) neutral in valence and not collocated with valenced concepts in corpora (e.g., reply and describe). Throughout, neutral primes with positive (negative) collocates facilitated the evaluation of positive (negative) targets much like strongly valenced primes, whereas neutral primes without valenced collocates did not. That neutral concepts with valenced collocates parallel the influence of valenced concepts suggests that their collocations in natural language may be sufficient for fostering implicit bias. Societal implications of the causal embedding hypothesis are discussed. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-13T21:20:57Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-f776494b1a804560b0b018ed031bd453 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-13T21:20:57Z |
| publishDate | 2022-06-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-f776494b1a804560b0b018ed031bd4532022-12-22T02:29:30ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782022-06-011310.3389/fpsyg.2022.871221871221Implicit Bias Reflects the Company That Words KeepDavid J. Hauser0Norbert Schwarz1Department of Psychology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, CanadaMind and Society Center, Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United StatesIn everyday language, concepts appear alongside (i.e., collocate with) related concepts. Societal biases often emerge in these collocations; e.g., female (vs. male) names collocate with art- (vs. science-) related concepts, and African American (vs. White American) names collocate with negative (vs. positive) concepts. It is unknown whether such collocations merely reflect societal biases or contribute to them. Concepts that are themselves neutral in valence but nevertheless collocate with valenced concepts provide a unique opportunity to address this question. For example, when asked, most people evaluate the concept “cause” as neutral, but “cause” is frequently followed by negative concepts (e.g., death, pain, and trouble). We use such semantically prosodic concepts to test the influence of collocation on the emergence of implicit bias: do neutral concepts that frequently collocate with valenced concepts have corresponding implicit bias? In evaluative priming tasks, participants evaluated positive/negative nouns (Study 1) or pictures (Study 2) after seeing verb primes that were (a) strongly valenced (e.g., hate and comfort), (b) neutral in valence but collocated with valenced concepts in corpora (e.g., ease and gain), or (c) neutral in valence and not collocated with valenced concepts in corpora (e.g., reply and describe). Throughout, neutral primes with positive (negative) collocates facilitated the evaluation of positive (negative) targets much like strongly valenced primes, whereas neutral primes without valenced collocates did not. That neutral concepts with valenced collocates parallel the influence of valenced concepts suggests that their collocations in natural language may be sufficient for fostering implicit bias. Societal implications of the causal embedding hypothesis are discussed.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.871221/fulllanguageimplicit biassemantic prosodysemantic embeddingcollocation |
| spellingShingle | David J. Hauser Norbert Schwarz Implicit Bias Reflects the Company That Words Keep Frontiers in Psychology language implicit bias semantic prosody semantic embedding collocation |
| title | Implicit Bias Reflects the Company That Words Keep |
| title_full | Implicit Bias Reflects the Company That Words Keep |
| title_fullStr | Implicit Bias Reflects the Company That Words Keep |
| title_full_unstemmed | Implicit Bias Reflects the Company That Words Keep |
| title_short | Implicit Bias Reflects the Company That Words Keep |
| title_sort | implicit bias reflects the company that words keep |
| topic | language implicit bias semantic prosody semantic embedding collocation |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.871221/full |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT davidjhauser implicitbiasreflectsthecompanythatwordskeep AT norbertschwarz implicitbiasreflectsthecompanythatwordskeep |