They Are All Armed and Dangerous!
Biased Language Use in Crime News With Ingroup and Outgroup Perpetrators
Abstract
Abstract. The present research aims to verify the presence of linguistic biases in crime news reports (Study 1) and their role (Study 2) in activating a crime stereotype toward racial/ethnic minorities. In a first content analysis study, the natural occurrence of a set of linguistic biases was analyzed in Italian news articles that described comparable crimes committed by an in- or an outgroup aggressor. Results indicated that when the crime was committed by an outgroup (vs. ingroup) member, more aggravating and less attenuating adjectives were used. Moreover, the nationality of the perpetrator was not only mentioned more frequently, it also appeared in most cases as a noun. In Study 2, participants read a fictitious news article that either described an in- or outgroup criminal act with neutral or biased language. Their implicit associations between in- and outgroup members and weapons (vs. tools) were measured immediately afterward in the weapon paradigm. Results confirmed that a biased (vs. neutral) language use increased participants’ crime-related associations with the outgroup in general only when an outgroup criminal was staged. The role of media portrayals in determining the cognitive representations of racial/ethnic minorities is discussed.
References
1999).
(The cognitive monster: The case against the controllability of automatic stereotype effects . In C. ShellyY. TropeEds., Dual-process theories in social psychology (pp. 361–382). New York, NY: Guilford Press.2014). lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4, R package version 1.1-7. Retrieved from http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lme4
(2002). The malleability of automatic stereotypes and prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6, 242–261. doi: 10.1207/S15327957PSPR0603_8
(2001). Toms, coons, mulattoes, mammies, and bucks: An interpretive history of Blacks in American films. New York, NY: Continuum.
(2001). Writing about rape: Use of the passive voice and other distancing text features as an expression of perceived responsibility of the victim. British Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 515–529. doi: 10.1348/014466601164957
(2008). What triggers public opposition to immigration? Anxiety, group cues, and immigration threat. American Journal of Political Science, 52, 959–978. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2008.00353.x
(1995). Psicologia Sociale del Pregiudizio
([Social psychology of prejudice] . Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino.2008). Nomina sunt omina.
(On the inductive potential of nouns and adjectives in person perception Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 839–859. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.94.5.8392006). The linguistic category model (LCM) manual. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Free University Amsterdam.
(2013). Implicit attitudes and beliefs adapt to situations: A decade of research on the malleability of implicit prejudice, stereotypes, and the self-concept. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 233–279. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-407236-7.00005-X
(1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 5–18. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.56.1.5
(2004). Media e Criminalità: La Rappresentazione della Criminalità nei Giornali della Provincia di Padova
([Media and criminality: Crime representations in the local journals of the province of Padova] . Retrieved from http://transcrime.cs.unitn.it/tc/37.php2006). Schemas as average conceptions: Skin tone, television news exposure, and culpability judgments. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 83, 131–149. doi: 10.1177/107769900608300109
(2008a). Network news and racial beliefs: Exploring the connection between national television news exposure and stereotypical perceptions of African Americans. Journal of Communication, 58, 321–337. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.00387.x
(2008b). Who is the victim here?: The psychological effects of overrepresenting White victims and Black perpetrators on television news. Journalism: Theory, Practice, & Criticism, 9, 582–605. doi: 10.1177/1464884908094160
(2000). Overrepresentation and underrepresentation of African Americans and Latinos as lawbreakers on television news. Journal of Communication, 50, 131–154. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2000.tb02845.x
(2005). Skin tone, crime news, and social reality judgments: Priming the stereotype of the dark and dangerous Black criminal. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 35, 1555–1570. doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2005.tb02184.x
(2008). Performing race in Flavor of Love and The Bachelor. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 25, 373–392. doi: 10.1080/15295030802327774
(1992). Blacks in the news: Television, modern racism and cultural change. Journalism Quarterly, 69, 341–361. doi: 10.1177/107769909206900209
(1994). Representation and reality in the portrayal of Blacks on network television news. Journalism Quarterly, 71, 509–520. doi: 10.1177/107769909407100303
(2000). The Black image in the White mind: Media and race in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
(2003). Implicit measures in social cognition research: Their meaning and use. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 297–327. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145225
(2012). Language use depending on news frame and immigrant origin. International Journal of Psychology, 48, 772–784. doi: 10.1080/00207594.2012.723803
(1997). Effects of stereotypical television portrayals of African-Americans on person perception. Social Psychology Quarterly, 60, 266–275. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2787086
(2010). Effects of linguistic abstractness in the mass media: How newspaper articles shape readers’ attitudes toward migrants. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, 22, 99–104. doi: 10.1027/1864-1105/a000014
(2008). Not yet human: Implicit knowledge, historical dehumanisation, and contemporary consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 292–306. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.94.2.292
(2012). Nouns cut slices: Effects of linguistic forms on intergroup bias. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 32, 62–83. doi: 10.1177/0261927X12463209
(1980).
(Hispanic-Americans: The new minority on television . In B. S. GreenbergEd., Life on television: Content analysis of US TV drama (pp. 3–13). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.2008). Fashioning race for the free market on America’s Next Top Model. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 25, 324–343. doi: 10.1080/15295030802192012
(2013). Attitudinal impact and cognitive channeling of immigration stereotypes through the news. Revista Latina de Comunicación Social, 68, 599–621. doi: 10.4185/RLCS-2013-992en
(1997). Race, media, and violence: Differential racial effects of exposure to violent news stories. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 19, 81–90. doi: 10.1207/s15324834basp1901_6
(1999). Linguistic intergroup bias: Stereotype perpetuation through language. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 31, 79–121. doi: 10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60272-5
(2007). The cultivation of social perceptions of Latinos: A mental models approach. Media Psychology, 9, 347–365. doi: 10.1080/15213260701286106
(2000). The portrayal of racial minorities on prime time television. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 44, 690–703. doi: 10.1207/s15506878jobem4404_10
(2006). Media representations of race, prototypicality, and policy reasoning: An application of self-categorization theory. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 50, 305–322. doi: 10.1207/s15506878jobem5002_8
(2009). The influence of exposure to depictions of race and crime in TV news on viewer’s social judgments. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 53, 615–635. doi: 10.1080/08838150903310534
(2000). Cops and crooks: Images of minorities on primetime television. Journal of Criminal Justice, 28, 385–396. doi: 10.1016/S0047-2352(00)00053-2
(2009). Ricerca Nazionale su Immigrazione e Asilo nei Media Italiani
([National research on immigration and asylum in the Italian media] University of Rome, La Sapienza. Retrieved fromhttp://www.unhcr.it/news/dir/91/view/733/ricerca-nazionale-su-immigrazione-e-asilo-nei-media-italiani-73300.html2010).
(Mass media . In J. F. DovidioM. HewstoneP. GlickV. M. EssesEds., The Sage handbook of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination (pp. 241–258). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.1994). Portrayals of crime, race, and aggression in ‘‘reality-based’’ police shows: A content analysis. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 38(2), 179–192. doi: 10.1080/08838159409364255
(2001). Prejudice and perception: The role of automatic and controlled processes in misperceiving a weapon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 181–192. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.81.2.181
(2006). Weapon bias: Split-second decisions and unintended stereotyping. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 287–291. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8721.2006.00454.x
(1996). The intersection of race and crime in television news stories: An experimental study. Political Communication, 13, 309–327. doi: 10.1080/10584609.1996.9963120
(1995). Subtle and blatant prejudice in Western Europe. European Journal of Social Psychology, 25, 57–75. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2420250106
(2006). Mixed-effects models in S and S-PLUS. New York: Springer Science & Business Media.
(1996). Priming prejudice: How stereotypes and counter-stereotypes influence attribution of responsibility and credibility among ingroups and outgroups. Human Communication Research, 23, 36–58. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2958.1996.tb00386.x
(2013). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. Retrieved from http://www.R-project.org/
. (2010). Television viewing, racial attitudes, and policy preferences: Exploring the role of social identity and intergroup emotions in influencing support for affirmative action. Communication Monographs, 77, 102–120. doi: 10.1080/03637750903514300
(2007). Activating and suppressing hostile and benevolent racism: Evidence for comparative media stereotyping. Media Psychology, 9, 623–646. doi: 10.1080/15213260701283244
(1990). Stereotyping in films in general and of the Hispanic in particular. Howard Journal of Communication, 2, 286–300. doi: 10.1080/10646179009359721
(2006). Ruling class: Disciplining class, race, and ethnicity in television reality court shows. Howard Journal of Communication, 17, 79–100. doi: 10.1080/10646170600656839
(1991). The linguistic category model, its bases, applications and range. European Review of Social Psychology, 2, 1–30. doi: 10.1080/14792779143000006
(2000). Television use, stereotypes of African Americans and opinions on affirmative action: An effective model of policy reasoning. Communication Monographs, 67, 362–371. doi: 10.1080/03637750009376517
(2015). Exposure to politicized media and prejudice against immigrants in Italy: Identifying its impact and psychological mediators. Psicologia Sociale, 2, 141–160.
(2009, October 10). È vero che il 72% della stampa è di sinistra? Facciamo quattro conti
([Is it true that the 72% of the press is left-wing oriented? Taking stock] . Retrieved from http://www.verosimile.it/post/-vero-che-il-72-della-stampa–di-sinistra-facciamo-quattro-conti/catid/242009). The subtle transmission of race bias via televised nonverbal behavior. Science, 326, 1711–1714. doi: 10.1126/science.1178358
(