In this experiment, European-Americans who were high versus low in modern
racism communicated their impressions of an African-American target to a
European-American receiver. Although no difference in the overall
negativity of the transmissions was detected, high modern racists used
more abstract terms to describe stereotypic African-American behaviors
(e.g., he is aggressive rather than he hit someone) than did low modern
racists. This pattern is consistent with the Linguistic Intergroup Bias
(LIB),
and represents the first known study showing a relation between an
individual difference measure and the LIB.
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