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dissertation entitled

Narrative Passages and Beliefs
About Social Groups:
Fiction Versus Nonfiction

presented by

Jennifer Garst

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ulna-9.1

NARRATIVE PASSAGES AND BELIEFS ABOUT SOCIAL GROUPS:
FICTION VERSUS NONFICTION

By

Jennifer Garst

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Psychology

1997

ABSTRACT

NARRATIVE PASSAGES AND BELIEFS ABOUT SOCIAL GROUPS:
FICTION VERSUS NONFICTION

By

Jennifer Garst

In everyday life, people are often confronted with narrative representations of different
social groups, some of which are accurate reﬂections of how these social groups actually
behave (nonﬁction) while others are simply ﬁctitious. The current investigation sought to
determine what sources people tend to rely on when forming and changing their beliefs
about social groups, and by what cognitive processes they do so. Based on a variety of
research on social cognition, social judgment, and social inﬂuence, it was predicted that
reading about a particular member of a social group (either a French Canadian or a
lesbian) would inﬂuence subsequently reported beliefs about the relevant group,
particularly if the passage presented ostensibly “r ” (i.e., nonﬁctional) rather than
ﬁctional information. Furthermore, it was predicted that cognitively busy readers would
not be able to distinguish between ﬁctional and nonﬁctional information because the extra
demands placed on their cognitive capacity would interfere with the presumably effortful
process of “unbelieving” the ﬁctional representations (e.g., Gilbert, 1991). Lastly,
readers’ preexisting attitudes were predicted to moderate the inﬂuence of the presented
passages, but only when the attitudes were relatively well-established; the perceived
plausibility of the passages was also expected to alter their inﬂuence. A total of 425 male

and female readers with varying levels of preexisting prejudice toward the target social

groups read a passage represented to be ﬁctional or nonﬁctional that featured either a
French Canadian, lesbian, or rural American (control) while they were cognitively busy or
not. Results unexpectedly indicated that non-busy participants were not differentially
affected by ﬁctional vs. nonﬁctional passages; consequently, many of the hypotheses of the
present research were not supported. Regardless of the passages’ putative source, most
participants who read passages about French Canadians (relative to the control passages)
expressed attitudes and beliefs that were more consistent with the content of the passages.
Additionally, the most prejudiced readers of the pro-lesbian passages subsequently
expressed more favorable attitudes and beliefs, but only if they had been cognitively busy
while reading the passages. Discussion centered on the conditions under which readers

will diﬁ‘erentiate between ﬁctional and nonﬁctional sources of information.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Through the long and arduous process of completing this dissertation, many
people have helped me along the way. First, and foremost, I would like to thank my
advisor, Galen Bodenhausen, for his never-ending supply of guidance and support. In
addition, I would like to thank Larry Messe’, who served as the chair of my dissertation
committee, as well as the other members of my dissertation committee, Norb Kerr, Linda
Jackson, and Bradley Greenberg; all of whom offered valuable advice and suggestions.
Rick DeShon also deserves a special thanks for his advice and consultation on statistical
procedures.

This dissertation would not have been possible without the help of a number of
undergraduate research assistants. My thanks go out to Paul Binelli, Pete Feinberg, Greg
Gulick, CC Hlavac, Brandy Jensen, Pamela Renner, Ryan Ryker, Jill Sears, and Erin
“filliams.

Since only those who have had the same experiences can truly understand what
one is going through, I would like to thank my fellow graduate students, and especially
Ruth and Susan. Lastly, I would like to thank Steve Libbey whose support and love

sustained me throughout my dissertation experience.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES .................................................. vii
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................. viii
INTRODUCTION .................................................... 1
Mental Representations of Social Groups .............................. 7
Prejudice Level Moderates the Effects of Written Narratives .............. ll
Cognitive Busyness Moderates the Effects of Written Narratives ........... 16
Perceived Plausibility Mediates the Effects of Written Narratives ........... 22
Overview ..................................................... 26
Hypotheses ................................................... 27
METHOD ......................................................... 30
Participants ................................................... 30
Design ....................................................... 3 1
Materials ..................................................... 32
Preexisting Attitude Scales .................................. 32

Social Group Belief Scales ........................ - .......... 33

Stimulus Narrative Passages ................................. 34

Perceived Plausibility Scale .................................. 35

Procedure .................................................... 35
Screening for Preexisting Attitudes ............................ 35

Main Experiment ......................................... 37

RESULTS ......................................................... 41
Manipulation Checks and Data Reduction ............................ 41
Manipulation Checks ...................................... 41

Source Recall ...................................... 41

Cognitive Busyness .................................. 44

Perceived Plausibility of F ictional/Nonﬁctional Sources ....... 45

Preexisting Attitudes ................................. 46

Data Reduction .......................................... 48

Statistical Procedures. ..................................... 50

Main Analyses ................................................. 51
Overview ............................................... 51

French Canadian Narrative Passages ........................... 51

V

Belief Consistency ................................... 53

General Attitudes about French Canadians ................ 6O

Perceived Plausibility ................................ 61

Summary ......................................... 66

Lesbian Narrative Passages .................................. 67

Belief Consistency ................................... 69

General Attitudes about Lesbians ....................... 77

Perceived Plausibility ................................ 82

Summary ......................................... 86

DISCUSSION ...................................................... 87

Summary of Findings ............................................ 97

Implications ................................................... 98

Limitations and Future Research ................................... 99

Conclusions .................................................. 104
APPENDICES

Appendix A - Preexisting Attitude Scales ............................ 105

Appendix B - Social Group Belief Scales ............................ 106

Appendix C - Stimulus Narrative Passages ........................... 108

Appendix D - Perceived Plausibility Scale ........................... 120

Appendix E - Narrative Ratings ................................... 121

Appendix F - Auxiliary Findings ................................... 122

Appendix G - French Canadian Belief Consistency (Single-Item Measures) . . 132

LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................ 143

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 - Odds Ratios Demonstrating More Accurate Recall of the Nonﬁctional versus
Fictional Source of the Passages ......................................... 43

vii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 - Distribution of Average Attitudes ................................ 47
Figure 2 - Belief Consistency with French Canadian Cultural Focus (French Canadian
Passages) ........................................................... 56
Figure 3 - Belief Consistency with French Canadian Cultural Focus (Not Cognitively
Busy) .............................................................. 58
Figure 4 - Belief Consistency with French Canadian Cultural Focus (Cognitively Busy) 59
Figure 5 - Belief Consistency with French Canadian Cultural Focus (with Perceived
Plausibility) ......................................................... 65
Figure 6 - Belief Consistency with Lesbian Passages (Lesbian Passages) ........... 71
Figure 7 - Belief Consistency with Lesbian Passages (Not Cognitively Busy) ........ 73
Figure 8 - Belief Consistency with Lesbian Passages (Cognitively Busy) ........... 74
Figure 9 - General Attitudes about Lesbians ................................. 78
Figure 10 - Perceived Plausibility of Lesbian Passages ......................... 84

Figure 11 - Conﬁdence in French Canadian Judgments (French Canadian Passages) . . 123

Figure 12 - Conﬁdence in French Canadian Judgments ........................ 125
Figure 13 - Conﬁdence in Lesbian Judgments .............................. 127
Figure 14 - Assessments of Lesbian Passages ............................... 131
Figure 15 - Belief Consistency with French Canadian Isolation .................. 133

Figure 16 - Belief Consistency with French Canadian Isolation (French Canadian
Passages) .......................................................... 134

viii

Figure 17 - Belief Consistency with Power of the Church in French Canadian Society

(French Canadian Passages) ............................................ 136
Figure 18 - Belief Consistency with Power of the Church in French Canadian Society
.................................................................. l3 8
Figure 19 - Belief Consistency with French Canadian Religiosity (French Canadian
Passages) .......................................................... 140
Figure 20 - Belief Consistency with French Canadian Religiosity ................ 141

ix

INTRODUCTION

Implicit in the extraordinary revival of storytelling is the possibility that

we need stories—that they are a ﬁmdamental unit of knowledge, the

foundation of memory, essential to the way we make sense of our lives:

the beginning, middle, and end of our personal and collective trajectories

(Buford 1996, June 24 & July 1, pp. 11-12).

In our everyday lives, we are constantly bombarded by media narrative
representations of diﬂ‘erent social groups. Some of these representations are relatively
accurate reﬂections of how members of these social groups actually behave (e.g., articles
ﬁ'om Wig and nonﬁctional articles from the Wes), while
other representations are simply ﬁctitious representations of different social group
members (e.g., short-stories and novels) that may or may not have any basis in social
reality. The current investigation sought to determine how these two diﬁ‘erent types of
narrative representations differentially affect viewers’ beliefs about social groups, or more
generally, to determine what sources people tend to rely on when they form and change
their beliefs about social groups. In addition, the processes by which people differentiate
between ﬁctional versus nonﬁctional written passages and how individuals’ prior attitudes
and perceptions about the reality of the passages alter the impact of the passages also were
examined.

Research on the effects of ﬁlm and television has consistently found that ostensibly
“real” representations or portrayals have more of an impact on viewers’ attitudes and
behaviors than do ﬁctional representations or portrayals. For instance, television

commercials that featured female characters only inﬂuenced children’s attitudes about

women when they were told that “all people in these commercials are real people; they are

2
all doing things that they really do and they are not acting in the commercials” (Pingree,
1978, p. 266). Likewise, viewers displayed more subsequent aggression when they
viewed violent or aggressive ﬁlm clips that were reportedly depicting real events versus
ﬁctional events (Atkin, 1983; Berkowitz & Alioto, 1973; Geen, 1975; Noble, 1973;
Thomas & Tell, 1974). For instance, Atkin (1983) found that viewers showed more
aggression after they viewed a ﬁlm segment that was reported to be a news bulletin versus
a Hollywood movie promotion. In a review of the effects of perceived reality of
television, Potter (1988) suggests that when explicitly told that the mediated materials are
real versus ﬁctional, viewers are more strongly affected by the “real” content.

More recent work, however, has shown that ﬁctional information can affect
people’s real-world beliefs (e.g., Gerrig, 1993; Gerrig & Prentice, 1991). For instance,
when the movie law: came out in the 1970s, both Newsweek and Time ran articles
discussing how fear of shark attacks kept people out of the water. Even though people
knew that the movie was a ﬁctional account, this knowledge did not alleviate their fears
about potential shark attacks. In fact, Iime magazine quoted a member of the Los
Angeles County Department of Beaches as saying “I had to force myself back in the water
....So have my lifeguards” (as cited in Gerrig, 1993, p. 197).

Although evidence of the inﬂuence of the movie laws is anecdotal, it appears that
real-world judgments can be affected by ﬁctional information, at least under certain
circumstances. For instance, M. D. Slater (1988/1989, 1990) found that ostensibly
nonﬁctional written messages tended to inﬂuence readers’ beliefs about social group
members’ characteristics to a greater extent than ostensibly ﬁctional ones. However, this

trend only occurred when the social group was relatively familiar (e.g., Contra guerrillas

3

and English gentlemen farmers). When the social group was unfamiliar (e.g., Eritrean
guerrillas and Dutch gentlemen farmers in Java), the impact of the ﬁctional message was
equal to or greater than that of the nonﬁctional message. Likewise, work by Brock and
Green (1995, September) supports the idea that ﬁctional written narratives may sometimes
be as persuasive as nonﬁctional narratives. Although participants who read either the
ﬁctional or nonﬁctional passages about a brutal murder expressed beliefs that were more
consistent with the story’s conclusion than did nonreaders, the beliefs of participants who
read the ﬁctional passage did not differ ﬁ'om the beliefs of participants who read the
nonﬁctional passage. Brock and Green posit that the ﬁctional passage was as inﬂuential as
the nonﬁctional passage because the participants had a greater tendency to misattribute the
ﬁctional narrative as true than to misattribute the nonﬁctional narrative as not true.
Recently, it has been suggested by Gerrig (Gerrig, 1993; Gerrig & Prentice, 1991)
that the inﬂuence of ﬁctional and nonﬁctional narrative passages can be explained by
taking into account how ﬁctional and nonﬁctional information is represented in people’s
knowledge structures. To substantiate his proposition, Gerrig relied on the work of Potts
and his colleagues (Potts & Peterson, 1985; Potts, Peterson, St. John, & Kirson, 1990;
Potts, St. John, & Kirson, 1989). These researchers propose a connectionist model of
selective activation that helps explain when and how newly learned information is either
incorporated into individuals’ preexisting knowledge structures or compartmentalized and
isolated ﬁom preexisting knowledge structures. Rather than suggesting that information
gained from written passages is always stored separately from preexisting knowledge or
that the new information is always incorporated into preexisting knowledge structures,

Potts and his colleagues suggest that incorporation is a matter of degree and will depend

4
on a number of situational and individual difference factors.

The basis of the connectionist model of selective activation is associative network
models (see Eagly & Chaiken, 1993; Smith, in press). At their most basic level,
associative network models postulate a massive network of interconnected nodes. The
nodes can represent many things, including simple features like line segments or patterns
or more complex features like “has wings,” “red breast,” and “can ﬂy.” In the network
model of mental representations, simple propositions consisting of a subject and a
predicate are represented as nodes or concepts that are linked. For instance, the
statement, “David is nice” would result in a division into two nodes (e.g., “David” and
“nice”) that would be linked together. This proposition, in turn, can be linked with other
propositions (e.g., “David is kind”) to represent causal or other relations between
propositions (e.g., “David is both nice and kind”). The strength of the links between
existing nodes is thought to determine how accessible the connected nodes are to each
other.

The paradigm that Potts et al. (1989) used to test the degree of
compartmentalization versus incorporation of ﬁctional and nonﬁctional information is
based on associative network models. When newly acquired information is
compartmentalized (i.e., placed in a separate information node), Potts et al. argue that the
retrieval and use of that compartmentalized information in other, unrelated contexts will
be hindered, while retrieval in a situation that accesses only that new, compartmentalized,
knowledge node would be facilitated. However, when the newly acquired information is
incorporated into preexisting knowledge structures or nodes, the retrieval of this new

information will be hindered when only the new information must be accessed but

5

facilitated when preexisting knowledge structures are accessed. In their research, Potts et
al. found that newly acquired information about either a large, ﬂightless bird called the
takahe or a small wool-bearing camel called the vicuna was compartmentalized to a
greater degree when the participants behaved they were reading a ﬁctional versus a
nonﬁctional account. Participants who believed that the written passage was ﬁctional
were much faster at verifying the critical statements when they were intermixed with ﬁller
statements related to the story context than when the ﬁller statements were unrelated to
the story context. However, when participants believed that they were reading
nonﬁctional versus ﬁctional information, having ﬁller statements related to the story
context had much less of an effect on participants’ speed at verifying the critical
statements. The ﬁnding that there is a much greater context effect when the information is
ostensibly ﬁctional versus nonﬁctional suggests that individuals compartmentalize or
isolate information from their general world knowledge to a greater extent when the
incoming information is represented to be ﬁctional versus nonﬁctional.

Although it appears that ﬁctional information is stored in a separate “story” node
in memory, follow-up research has suggested that the associative link between the “story”
node and real-world judgments can be facilitated. For instance, research by Gerrig and
Prentice (1991, Exp. 1 & 2) suggests that ﬁctional information related to broad, familiar
topics can inﬂuence a reader’s ability to assess the accuracy of statements dealing with
everyday life. In their experiments, participants read stories where half of the information
consisted of details that were speciﬁc to the context of the story (e. g., the speed limit was
reported to be 70 and the vice-president of the United States was reported to be Geraldine

Ferraro or George Bush). The other halfof the information consisted of assertions that

6

transcended the speciﬁc context of the story. These context-free assertions were more
general and had greater potential application outside of the context of the story than did
the story-speciﬁc details because they were not reliant upon particular features of the story
(e.g., penicillin was reported to have bad consequences for humans and it was asserted
that most forms of mental illness are not contagious).

It was found that context-free assertions created more interference in people’s
abilities to make real-world judgments about the accuracy of statements related to
everyday life than did story-speciﬁc details (Gerrig & Prentice, Exp. 1 & 2). More
speciﬁcally, for those participants who read story-speciﬁc details, such as that the speed
limit was 70 (information inconsistent with the real world at the time of the study), it
generally took only an extra 78 milliseconds to respond true to “The speed limit is 55
miles per hour” and false to “The speed limit is 70 miles per hour,” compared to a control
group who read a story containing no information relevant to the experimental topics.
However, participants who read context-free assertions took 302 milliseconds longer than
the control group to make real-world judgments related to the experimental topics (as
cited in Gerrig, 1993, p. 221). This pattern of results suggests that story-speciﬁc details
are not generally incorporated into individuals’ preexisting knowledge structures, whereas
context-free assertions appear to be incorporated into individuals’ knowledge structures.
Although ﬁctional context-free assertions do not appear to replace preexisting knowledge,
they do appear to coexist with preexisting knowledge structures and thus have an impact
on real-world judgments.

In their third experiment, Gerrig and Prentice (1991) found that even though

context-free assertions appear to coexist with preexisting knowledge structures and

7

inﬂuence real-world judgments, it appears that they are still compartmentalized in
memory, separate ﬁom preexisting knowledge structures. Using the paradigm of Potts
(Potts et al., 1989), Gerrig and Prentice found that participants were faster to verify both
story-speciﬁc details and context-free assertions when they were in the context of other
statements ﬁ'om the story.

Overall, the recent work by Gerrig and Prentice (1991; see also Gerrig, 1993)
suggests that all narrative information, whether ﬁctional or nonﬁctional, is stored in a
“story” node separate ﬁ'om individuals’ preexisting knowledge stnrctures. However, it
also appears that both nonﬁctional information and information that can be easily applied
to preexisting knowledge structures are highly accessible and will thus inﬂuence real-
world judgments. Information that is ﬁctional and/or speciﬁc to the context of the
narrative appears to have less impact on real-world judgments, but can still have an eﬁ‘ect
under certain circumstances. According to Gerrig, it is possible to explain the available
data by assuming that a link is formed between ﬁctional information and preexisting
knowledge concepts, because “such a link would enable ﬁctional information to affect
real-world judgments as a ﬁmction of the strength of associations” (1993, pp. 222-223).
Thus, based on the work by Gerrig, it is thought that the link between ﬁctional information
and real-world speciﬁc judgments, such as the speed limit, appears to be weak, whereas
the link between ﬁctional information and more general judgments about the world, such
as the beneﬁts of penicillin, appears to be strong.

Mental Representations of Social Groups
The importance of examining the impact of ﬁctional versus nonﬁctional written

passages is evidenced by research that reveals the short-term impact of exemplars on

8

pe0ple’s attitudes and social judgments (e. g., Schwarz & Bless, 1992a; Smith & Zérate,
1992; Wilson & Hodges, 1992). These researchers have posited that the current context
and the information that is salient in it can inﬂuence individuals’ momentary attitudes. For
instance, research has shown that incidental exposure to a well-liked Aﬁican American
celebrity, such as Oprah Winfrey or Michael Jordan, can inﬂuence subsequently reported
racial attitudes (Bodenhausen, Schwarz, Bless, & Wanke, 1995). Likewise, Schwarz and
Bless (1992b) have found that activating thoughts about politicians who had been involved
in a scandal inﬂuenced respondents’ subsequent evaluations of politicians’ trustworthiness
in general, as well as the trustworthiness of three speciﬁc politicians. In fact, more recent
research has shown that when participants are primed by a more positive or negative
political exemplar than they had named spontaneously four weeks earlier, their attitudes
about politicians as a whole changed in a manner consistent with their attitudes toward the
speciﬁc exemplar with which they were primed (Sia, Lord, Blessum, Ratcliff, & Lepper,
1997, Exp. 3). Lastly, Zillmann and his colleagues (Gibson & Zillmann, 1994; Zillmann,
Gibson, Sundar, & Perkins, 1996) found that people are much more likely to base their
estimates of the likelihood of car jacking and the plight of the American family farm on
exposure to exemplars of these particular situations than to exposure to more pallid, but
ultimately more useﬁrl, base-rate information. It is thus quite plausible that reading a
written passage about a member of a particular social group can have at least a transitory
impact on social beliefs and attitudes. '

Schwarz and Bless (1992a) offer an “inclusion/exclusion model” to explain the
context dependency of attitudinal judgments. Applied to the current context, the model

implies that when a depiction of a member of a social group is included in readers’ current

9

representations of the group, their judgments will be based on the new representations
formed. That is, judgments will be assimilated toward the narrative description because it
has been incorporated into readers’ current understandings of the particular social group
in question. For example, when reading about a positively portrayed lesbian, readers may
include this depiction into their mental representations of lesbians in general and report
more favorable judgments of the group based on these newly formed representations.
However, if the depiction is excluded ﬁom viewers’ representations, the depiction either
will not aﬁ'ect people’s judgments at all or will serve as a standard of comparison against
which other relevant information will be contrasted. This contrast pattern is evidenced by
research showing that simply priming awareness of three politicians tainted by scandal
caused individuals to view three other untainted politicians to be especially tnrstworthy
(Schwarz & Bless, 1992b). Thus, if a positive depiction of the lesbian is excluded from
readers’ representations of lesbians, their judgments either may not be inﬂuenced by the
newly presented information, or may even become more negative if this atypically positive
exemplar is used as a standard of comparison.

Whether individuals will include or exclude a particular exemplar from their
representations of different social groups will depend on a number of factors, including
whether the exemplar is deemed representative of the social group as a whole (Schwarz &
Bless, 1992a). It is thought that individuals who are judged to be representative of their
social groups will be more likely included in outgroup members’ representations of those
social groups, while individuals who are judged to be nonrepresentative of their social
groups will be excluded ﬁ'om outgroup members’ representations of those social groups.

For instance, it has been found that raters are more likely to assimilate, or judge two target

10

individuals as more equally attractive when the target individuals share something so
simple as a college major, yet the raters contrast the attractiveness of the two target
individuals when the targets are considered distinct entities, such as not sharing a common
college major (Seta, Martin, & Capehart, 1979). Based on how representative the
depicted individuals are of their respective social groups, it was expected that readers will
be more likely to assimilate nonﬁctional information into their representations of the
different social groups than they will be to assimilate ﬁctional information. This pattern
was thought to be likely to occur because the “real” people and behaviors portrayed in the
nonﬁctional narrative passages will be deemed as more representative of the people and
behaviors associated with the represented social group than will fabricated people and
behaviors. Interestingly, the same prediction would have been made if participants simply
saw the nonﬁctional information as more credible than the ﬁctional information and, thus,
were more likely to include the nonﬁctional, more credible, information into their
representations of social groups (e.g., Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

In summary, it appears that written narratives that are represented to be “real” will
have a greater impact on readers’ beliefs about social groups than will narratives that are
represented to be ﬁctional. This pattern was expected to occur in the present research
because it is more likely that information ﬁ'om the “real” narratives will be incorporated
into readers’ preexisting knowledge structures and thus will be more accessible when they
make real-world judgments. In the terminology of Gerrig (1993), it was predicted that
there will generally be a stronger link between nonﬁctional information and people’s
representations of a particular social group than there will be between ﬁctional information

and people’s social group representations. However, as seen by work by M. D. Slater

11

(1988/ 1989, 1990) and Brock and Green (1995, September), a number of factors can
eliminate the greater inﬂuence of nonﬁctional written passages. Slater’s research suggests
that when confronted by an unfamiliar target group, readers are occupied with making
sense of the presented information and do not have enough cognitive capacity left over to
utilize the ﬁctional/nonﬁctional nature of the information when making subsequent
judgments. Brock and Green posit that the nonﬁctional written passage was not more
inﬂuential in their research because participants had more of a tendency to misattribute the
ﬁctional narrative as true than to misattribute the nonﬁctional narrative as not true. In the
following sections, factors such as preexisting attitudes about the depicted social group,
the cognitive busyness under which participants read narrative passages, and the perceived
plausibility of the passages will be discussed as possible moderators or mediators of the
eﬁ‘ects of ﬁctional and nonﬁctional written passages.
Prejudice Level Moderates the Effects of Written Narratives

Although it was expected based on past research (see Potter, 1988, for a review)
that people will be more strongly affected by information that is reputed to be nonﬁctional
versus ﬁctional, it is likely that readers’ prejudice about social groups will moderate how
written passages about social group members affect them. For instance, in the domain of
television it has been shown that viewers’ preexisting attitudes moderate their reactions to
the character of Archie Bunker in the program “All in the Family” (Vidmar & Rokeach,
1974). It was found that high-prejudiced as compared to low-prejudiced white viewers
tended to identify more with the character of Archie Bunker, saw him as winning rather
than as ridiculed, and saw nothing wrong with his use of racial and ethnic slurs.

Research suggests that it is under circumstances that encourage message scrutiny

12

that the diﬁ‘erential impact of ﬁctional versus nonﬁctional information will most likely be
observed. Prentice, Gerrig, and Bailis (1992) found that participants gave more critical
appraisals of presented information if the information contradicted what participants
considered to be real-world truths (as cited in Gerrig, 1993). When students read a story
set at their rival school, they changed their beliefs in a manner consistent with the
information contained in the story, but when the story was set at their own school, their
beliefs changed little or even in a direction opposite to the story’s assertions. The authors
argue that their data suggest that the personal relevance of the home school story caused
the participants to scrutinize, or closely examine the message, and that this scrutiny, in
turn, undermined the ﬁctional arguments that were often contradictory to real-world
truths. Thus, when people are motivated to scrutinize the available information they will
be more likely to take into consideration all relevant information, including using the
ostensible source of the information as a persuasive argument (Petty & Cacioppo, 1984).

People have a stake in maintaining and reinforcing their preexisting attitudes
(Chaiken, Giner-Sorolla, & Chen, 1996), so they will be more likely to scrutinize, rather
than simply accept, written passages that conﬂict with their existing attitudes. Prejudiced
attitudes toward social group members and commitment to these prejudices can certainly
be an impetus for more versus less prejudiced individuals to closely examine a written
passage about a social group member that is positive in tone. This scrutiny should lessen
the impact of ﬁctional written passages because people will be more likely to take into
account the ﬁctional, and possibly less credible, nature of the information.

In a review of research pertaining to people’s tendencies to selectively expose

themselves to information, Frey (1986) asserts that there can be a defensive character to

13

how pe0p1e process information. When people are unwilling or unable to change their
decisions or views because of, among other things, internal resistance to change or
external constraints, they will tend to ignore information contrary to their attitudes and
increase their preference for information supportive of their attitudes (see also
Kleinhesselink & Edwards, 1975; Sekaquaptewa & von Hippel, as cited in von Hippel,
Sekaquaptewa, & Vargas, 1995). In addition, prior attitudes can also distort the
perception and judgment of information (see Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). Research
demonstrates that people’s attitudes can elicit a congeniality bias such that information
congruent with one’s attitudes will be judged more positively than will information that is
incongruent with one’s attitudes (Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979). In fact, this research
showed that people can become even more extreme in their attitudes after evaluating equal
amounts of evidence supporting and opposing their position because they tended to
automatically accept evidence conﬁrming their preexisting attitudes while they critically
evaluated disconﬁrming evidence. Moreover, close examination of the contradictory
information may also lessen the impact of the written passages because of more prejudiced
people’s memory biases and distortions regarding information that contradicts their
preexisting attitudes (e. g., Fyock & Stangor, 1994; Johnson & Sherman, 1990; see also
Smith, in press).

Because of people’s defensive reaction to information contrary to their views, the
ﬁctional status of information may provide readers with a relatively easy excuse to reject
or ignore information contradictory to their preexisting attitudes. Schwarz and Bless
(1992a) discuss the fact that people do not always incorporate information into relevant

mental representations. They claim that individuals will exclude information about a

14

speciﬁc group member ﬁ'om their representation of that social group if the member is
perceived to be too distinct from the entire group (nonrepresentative). Such members are
either excluded ﬁ'om the category or even placed in an entirely different category. This
concept corresponds to Allport’s (1979) classic notion of “re-fencing” or subtyping
(Rothbart, 1981; Rothbart & John, 1985; Weber & Crocker, 1983). Research shows that
people attempt to maintain their stereotypes by subtyping, or explaining away, individuals
who challenge their stereotypes (Kunda & Oleson, 1995). For instance, it was found that
simply including versus excluding a neutral attribute about a counterstereotypic target
(e.g., saying an unpromiscuous gay male was an accountant) blocked participants from
incorporating this counterstereotypic information into their stereotypes about gay men.
However, the neutral attribute did not prevent people ﬁ'om generalizing overly stereotypic
information into their stereotypes (e.g., saying a promiscuous gay male was an
accountant). All together, these lines of research suggest that individuals often exclude
information about a counterstereotypic group member from their representations of the
social group as a whole. Moreover, when the counterstereotypic description is
represented as ﬁctional, this attribute may provide prejudiced readers an easy excuse to
not incorporate the presented information into their mental representations.

Social judgment theory (Hovland, Harvey, & Sherif, 1957) can be used to
understand how readers, with varying levels of prejudice, will respond to written passages
featuring a member of a social group. Social judgment theory posits that individuals’
attitude changes are dependent upon their assessments of the position advocated in the
persuasive attempt relative to their own positions. Attitude change, thus, is considered to

be a two-part process. First, after exposure, individuals make judgments about the

15

position advocated in the message relative to their own positions on the issue presented.
Then, after these initial judgments are made, attitude change may or may not occur. The
magnitude of the attitude change will be dependent upon the degree of discrepancy
between the individuals’ initial positions and the position advocated by the message.
Messages that individuals ﬁnd acceptable or most similar to their initial attitudes will fall
into their latitude of acceptance and thus be accepted. Positions individuals ﬁnd to be
unacceptable or totally discrepant ﬁ'om their attitudes will fall into their latitude of
rejection and thus be rejected. Finally, positions individuals consider neither acceptable
nor unacceptable will fall into their latitude of noncommitment and thus will not be either
accepted or rejected. The size of these zones is thought to be dependent upon the level of
personal signiﬁcance or ego-involvement the issue has for the individuals. That is, the
higher their ego-involvement on a speciﬁc issue, the smaller the range of acceptable
positions and the larger the range of unacceptable positions and positions they are
ambivalent about.

Social judgment theory incorporates individuals’ perceptual reactions to the
position advocated in the message. These perceptual distortions are termed assimilation
and contrast effects. Assimilation effects occur when the individuals perceive the message
to advocate a position closer to their own that it actually does. The individuals
subjectively minimize the discrepancy between their attitudes and the advocated position.
Contrast effects occur when the individuals perceive the message to advocate a position
ﬁrrther from their own than it actually does. The individuals subjectively maximize the
discrepancy between their attitudes and the advocated position.

Based on social judgment theory, it seems likely that more prejudiced individuals

16

will deem a positively toned description of a member of a stigmatized social group
member to be highly discrepant ﬁ'om their initial attitudes. This description will thus be
likely to fall into their latitude of rejection, be contrasted ﬁ'om participants’ preexisting
attitudes and beliefs, and not have an impact on participants’ attitudes or beliefs about the
depicted social group member. Less prejudiced individuals, on the other hand, may
perceive the same positively toned description as not at all discrepant from their initial
attitudes. The description will thus be likely to fall into their latitude of acceptance, be
assimilated toward participants’ preexisting attitudes and beliefs, and not promote any
need for attitude change. Because most attitude change is thought to occur when a
message falls into individuals’ latitude of noncommitment but is close to their latitude of
rejection, it appears that those individuals who have moderate levels of prejudice are most
likely to be inﬂuenced by a positively toned description of a member of a stigmatized
social group. More prejudiced individuals may reject the positively described social group
member outright while less prejudiced individuals may already agree with the positive
description of the social group member.
Cognitive Busyness Moderates the Effects of Written Narratives

Although it appears that there will be different memory nodes for ﬁctional and
nonﬁctional information, it is also likely that people may have diﬁiculty determining
whether the source of their knowledge was ostensibly ﬁctional or nonﬁctional. Johnson
and her colleagues (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993) call this difﬁculty of
determining the source of one’s memory, knowledge, and beliefs a failure in source
monitoring. They claim that the accuracy of one’s decisions or judgments is largely

dependent on being able to remember whether the source of the information used in the

l7

decision making process is reliable. For instance, the accuracy of a decision could be
greatly aﬁ‘ected by whether the facts with which you are making a decision are based on
information ﬁ'om a grocery store tabloid versus the Wm. According to the
source-monitoring framework, the process by which you determine the source of your
memories is based on the particular characteristics of your memories. For instance,
memories for perceived events tend to include more perceptual, spatial and temporal,
semantic, and affective information and less information about cognitive operations than
memories for imagined events (Johnson et al., 1993; Johnson & Raye, 1981). Thus,
source monitoring is based on a decision process whereby the characteristics of a
particular memory are compared to the average characteristics of memories derived ﬁ'om
different sources (e.g., internally generated or externally generated memories). In terms of
diﬁ‘erentiating between written passages that are represented to be ﬁctional or
nonﬁctional, it appears that determining the source of the information gleaned ﬁ'om the
passages would be difﬁcult. If one were reading a book versus watching a movie, it is
likely that the sensory and contextual information associated with the two sources would
differ. However, if both the ﬁctional and nonﬁctional stimuli were in written form, it
would be unlikely that the sensory and contextual information attached to either type of
information would differ. Thus, these features would not be useﬁrl when one seeks to
determine whether the source of the written information was ﬁctional or nonﬁctional.
Because of this lack of source cues on which to differentiate between ﬁctional and
nonﬁctional written information, readers’ real-world judgments related to the ﬁctional or
nonﬁctional written information that they receive may not differ based on whether the

source of the information is ﬁctional or nonﬁctional.

18

In his work on the inﬂuence of ﬁctional versus nonﬁctional written passages on
beliefs about social groups, M. D. Slater (1988/ 1989, 1990) contends that nonﬁctional
narratives had a greater effect on readers’ beliefs only in the familiar condition because in
the unfamiliar condition a reader’s cognitive capacity is fully engaged in understanding the
presented information. When readers are attempting to understand information about
unfamiliar groups, they have “little opportunity to critically compare new information to
preexisting beliefs,” according to Slater (1988/1989, p. 113). Slater concludes that “the
effect of familiarity and factuality on social beliefs is mostly through information
processing diﬁ‘erences associated with familiarity and factuality, not through their
diﬁ‘erential impact on social inference processes” (p. 116). In essence, Slater is arguing
that when conﬁonted by information about an unfamiliar social group for which readers
do not have preexisting beliefs (e. g., Eritrean guerrillas), the cognitive capacity of the
readers is fully utilized in understanding the new information and none is left over to
examine critically the accuracy of the information. However, when readers do have
preexisting beliefs about a familiar social group (e.g., Contra guerrillas), they probably
have sufﬁcient cognitive capacity to examine critically the accuracy of the presented
information.

In a review entitled “How Mental Systems Believe,” Gilbert (1991) suggests that
acceptance of an idea is part of the automaticcomprehension of that idea and that
rejection of an idea only occurs subsequently to and more effortfully than does acceptance.
Following Spinoza, Gilbert argues that acceptance and comprehension of ideas are not
distinct psychological acts but that acceptance of an idea is part of the initial

comprehension process. Research has found that participants who read both true and false

19

linguistic propositions were more likely to consider the false propositions to be true, but
not vice versa, if they were interrupted versus not interrupted while processing the
information (Gilbert, Krull, & Malone, 1990). This result occurred even when the
accuracy of the proposition was revealed prior to its comprehension. In fact, just the act
of quickly reading a false proposition prior to assessing its veracity increased the
likelihood that participants considered it to be true. In a similar vein, research has shown
that when individuals’ capacities are impaired by doing mental arithmetic while listening to
true or false statements, these cognitively busy individuals are more likely to misremember
the false statements as true than are individuals who are not cognitively busy (Begg, Anas,
& Farinacci, 1992). In fact, the researchers suggest that this pattern occurred because
cognitive busyness had an adverse impact on participants’ memory for the source of the
statements and the corresponding veracity of the statements. At the same time, cognitive
busyness did not lessen another probable basis for judging a statement’s truth, its
familiarity to the participants (e.g., illusory-truth effect).

Work by Gilbert and his colleagues (Gilbert, 1991, 1993; Gilbert et al., 1990;
Gilbert, Tafarodi, & Malone, 1993) suggests that, by default, people initially think the
information that they receive is true. Only if they have time, energy, and/or conclusive
evidence are people able to reject information that they initially accepted during the
comprehension process. In a manner similar to other cognitive paradigms, such as the
Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) and certain models of
stereotype activation (e.g., Bodenhausen, Macrae, & Garst, in press), it appears that
individuals require both motivation and capacity to analyze incoming information ﬁrlly and

make informed decisions. In fact, when under either cognitive load or time pressure,

20

people were more likely to believe false information and use it in making decisions about
sentencing a criminal defendant or how much they like a target individual (Gilbert et al.,
1993). The false information did not inform people’s judgments, however, when they had
the capacity and time to make accurate decisions. These results suggest that to make
accurate judgments, people must have both the desire and capacity to use the rules of
logical analysis to ﬁrlly examine the available information. If people are rushed, are
attending to other tasks, or are unwilling to analyze the available information, then the fact
that they have the information available to produce a correct judgment may be irrelevant.

The “inclusion/exclusion model” also suggests that the default operation for
humans is to include rather than exclude incoming information (Schwarz & Bless, 1992a).
Schwarz and Bless (1992a) argue that exclusion is an eﬁ‘ortful process that needs to be
triggered by features salient to the task or the communication context. In line with how
Gilbert (1993) views the processing of true or false information, the inclusion/exclusion
model implies that the exemplars featured in a written passage will automatically be
incorporated into one’s representation of the target group to which that exemplar belongs.
The exemplar will only be subsequently removed from the reader’s representation of the
social group through a second, more effortful step. Thus, competing tasks that tax
processing capacity will likely facilitate the emergence of assimilation effects and, at the
same time, interfere with the exclusion operation and undermine the emergence of contrast
eﬁ‘ects.

Support for this idea comes from three experiments that examined the amount of
assimilation and/or contrast that occurs when there are limitations on either motivation or

capacity (Martin, Seta, & Crelia, 1990). This research utilized priming stimuli that were

21

found to result in contrast effects when participants were both motivated and able to
process the information. However when the participants were distracted, unmotivated
because their individual responses were supposedly camouﬂaged by group-level responses,
or when they were classiﬁed as having low need for cognition, they were more likely to
assimilate versus contrast the information. These results suggest that inclusion is the
default mechanism and exclusion only occurs in a second, more etfortﬁrl process.

Lastly, Shapiro and Lang (1991) posit in their model of how television inﬂuences
the construction of social reality that people, by default, respond to every stimulus as if it
were real, at least momentarily. According to this model, higher-order cognitive
processes are utilized to distinguish which stimulus events, and later, which stored
episodic memories are relevant to the “real world.” Thus, even though event memories
may include a lot of contextual information about the source of the event, including
whether the event was ﬁctional or factual, this information may only be utilized by higher-
order processes that require both motivation and capacity to ﬁrlly engage.

Based on the research just reviewed, it was the contention of the present research
that cognitive busyness will prevent participants from distinguishing between ﬁctional and
nonﬁctional information in their processing of the written passages by undermining
processing capacity. In order to investigate this possibility, we could have simply created
cognitive busyness by having participants engage in an additional, irrelevant task.
However, if participants had engaged in an irrelevant task, they may not have ﬁrlly
comprehended the information that they were supposedly reading. Thus, the additional
task may not only have reduced the cognitive capacity available to the participants, but

may also have directed their attention away from the information provided in the written

22

passages. To solve this potential problem, it was possible to use the technique employed
by Gilbert, Pelham, and Krull in their study of person perception (1988, Exp. 1). In this
research, all participants were asked to observe a silent video of a female supposedly
getting acquainted with another female, who was out of view of the camera. In addition,
approximately half the participants were simultaneously asked to memorize the topics that
the target female was supposedly discussing. Although participants who performed the
dual tasks were able to recall more of the discussion topics than those who performed only
the observation task, the dual-task participants were unable to modify their person
perception judgments to accommodate contextual information. More speciﬁcally, the
dual-task participants, unlike the single—task participants, did not adjust their assessments
about the target female’s perceived trait anxiety based on whether the target was
supposedly discussing anxiety provoking or relaxing topics. As applied to the present
research, the possible problem of cognitively busy people simply being inattentive to the
presented information was dealt with by having the participants in the cognitively busy
condition attempt to memorize information presented in the written passages. Although
this task should increase participants’ abilities to remember the presented information and,
perhaps, also increase the likelihood that the participants will endorse belief items
consistent with the narrative passages, the task should not leave the participants with
sufﬁcient cognitive capacity to allow them to “unbelieve” or exclude the presented
information from their representations of the various social groups.
Perceived Plausibility Mediates the Effects of Written Narratives

Although research consistently has found that ostensibly “real” representations or

portrayals have a greater impact on audiences than do ﬁctional representations or

23

portrayals, it is unclear whether people actually believe the “real” information to be, in
fact, more realistic. For instance, Gilbert (1993) discusses how a Klansman would
probably consider a book by a white supremacist to be more truthful than an encyclopedia
because, ﬁ'om the Klan member’s perspective, the former would contain a higher
proportion of true statements than would the latter. As Gilbert summarizes, “when we say
a person seeks true information we really mean that the person seeks information that he
or she considers true....Statements that complement (rather than contradict) what one
already believes are likely to be seen as true” (p. 81). Thus, it was expected that whether
people consider narrative passages about social group members to be truthﬁrl will have an
impact on their inﬂuence. In fact, a study has shown that the perceived reality of
television programs addressing law enforcement is a more important predictor of viewers’
images of society safety, understanding of law enforcement, and acceptance of the way
television portrays police behavior than are demographic characteristics, direct experience
with law enforcement, or total time spent watching programs dealing with law
enforcement (D. Slater & Elliott, 1982).

A criticism of the research that examines how television affects viewers’ attitudes
is that the researchers have generally worked under the assumption that the reality of the
televised message lies in the content of the message itself and not with the perceivers
(Potter, 1988). In studies that have addressed the effects of “real” versus ﬁctional
depictions (Atkin, 1983; Berkowitz & Alioto, 1973; Geen, 1975; Noble, 1973; Pingree,
1978; Thomas & Tell, 1974), only two have included a manipulation check to determine
whether the participants exposed to the “real” stimulus actually perceived the material to

be more real than those exposed to the ﬁctional stimulus (Atkin, 1983; Pingree, 1978).

24
Since Atkin (1983) found that there was more within-group variation than between-group
variation on the reality manipulation check measure, it appears that perceptions of reality
are a matter of individual interpretation (as cited in Potter, 198 8). Therefore, instead of
assuming that introducing the written passages as either ﬁctional or nonﬁctional would
make all viewers think the passages are real or less real, in the present research the
audience’s perception of the reality of the stimulus was measured directly.

Research on the perceived reality of television suggests that there is a dimensional
structure for people’s perceptions of television’s reality (e.g., Busselle, 1995, August;
Dorr, 1983; Elliott, Rudd, & Good, 1983, August; Hawkins, 1977; Potter, 1988; Reeves,
1978). For children, it is clear that their perceptions of the reality of television fall into
unique dimensions (Hawkins, 1977). In a factor analysis, the ﬁrst factor entitled “Magic
Window” accounted for 29% of the total rotated variance. This factor addressed whether
the children perceived the people seen on television to be either dramatic or actual people.
The second factor entitled “Social Expectations,” with 14% of the total variance,
measured the degree to which people and events on television are similar to those of the
real world. According to Hawkins, the key distinction between these two main
dimensions of perceived reality is the degree to which television is seen as portraying real
life instead of ﬁction and the degree to which television characters and events are similar
to children’s expectations about the real world.

Research on what pe0ple mean when they deﬁne something as real indicates that
almost halfof the 16-year-old and adult participants deﬁned “real” as “something that was
probable, something that had happened to them or to acquaintances” (Dorr, 1983, p. 204).

Only about a quarter of the adults deﬁned “real” as something that could possibly happen.

25

However, when providing the rationale for their reality judgments, both adolescents and
adults based their reasons more on the possibility of the event occurring rather than on the
probability that it will occur. Reasons based on personal experience, or probability, were
the second most frequently cited rationale for individuals’ reality judgments. According to
Dorr, “more and more, real means made up, but probable in real life, representative in real
life, like something personal acquaintances or I have experienced” (p. 205).

Based on Dorr’s research (1983), it appears that the most appropriate measure of
perceived reality for the current research is a measure of readers’ perceptions of how
probable the depicted representations or portrayals are likely to be in the real world.
Since plausibility is a concept closely related to probability, the Perceived Plausibility
Subscale of the Perceived Reality Scale developed by Elliott et al. (1983, August) was
used in the present research to measure how realistic readers perceive written information
to be. Elliott at al. claim that like Hawkin’s (1977) Magic Window dimension, the
Perceived Plausibility Subscale can help determine whether the readers actually perceive
that the passages provide social and environmental images like those existing in the real
world. It was expected that the greater the perceived plausibility of the narrative
passages, the greater the effect they will have on readers’ beliefs. This prediction was
based on the premise that there should be stronger links between people’s representations
and what they perceive to be real information than between people’s representations and
what they perceive to be less real information (e. g., Gerrig, 1993).

In addition, it was thought that participants’ perceptions of the perceived
plausibility of the written narrative passages will be dependent on their attitudes about the

social group featured in the passages. As such, it was expected that more prejudiced

26

individuals will not only ignore or distort information that contradicts their beliefs about
social group members, they will also have less faith in the perceived plausibility of the
accounts (see Johnson & Sherman, 1990). In turn, to the extent that participants have less
faith in the perceived plausibility of narrative passages featuring a member of a target
group, it was expected that reading those narrative passages will have less impact on their
beliefs. More speciﬁcally, it was expected that the perceived plausibility of narrative
passages featuring a member of a social group for which readers have preexisting attitudes
will mediate the relationship between readers’ preexisting attitudes about the depicted
social group and their subsequently reported beliefs about the social group.
Overview

It would be naive to assume that simply reading a narrative passage about one of
several social groups would have a long-term impact on participants’ attitudes, or overall
positive or negative evaluations of the depicted social group (e.g., Fishbein & Ajzen,
1975). Attitudes are complex structures that are made up of many diverse components
that vary in salience across time and context (e.g., Wilson & Hodges, 1992). The general
assumption of attitude theorists is that beliefs are the building blocks of attitudes, since
beliefs are understood to be descriptive associations or linkages that people establish
between attitude objects such as social groups and various attributes (e. g., Fishbein &
Ajzen). Therefore, one of the ways to change individuals’ attitudes about a social group
would be to ﬁrst change their beliefs about that social group. In this spirit, the present
research attempted to demonstrate primarily that beliefs can be affected by written
passages. However, the effect of reading narrative passages on participants’ attitudes

toward the social group portrayed in the passage was also examined. Lastly, the current

27

research examined whether the written passages inﬂuence how much conﬁdence people
have in the beliefs they hold. More strongly held beliefs should have more impact on
people’s behaviors than beliefs not strongly held (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Moreover,
research suggests that individuals’ conﬁdences in their beliefs may give an indication of
whether their preexisting beliefs were reinforced by narrative passages that they read (M.
D. Slater & Rouner, 1992).

Overall, the current investigation sought to determine how ﬁctional and
nonﬁctional representations of a social group member affect viewers’ beliefs about the
represented social group. This research was undertaken in order to extend and replicate
prior work that has examined the differential effect of ﬁctional and nonﬁctional written
passages on readers’ real-world judgments (e. g., Brock & Green, 1995, September; M. D.
Slater, 1988/ 1989, 1990). The current investigation not only attempted to demonstrate
the diﬁ‘erential impact of ﬁctional and nonﬁctional information on participants’ beliefs
about social groups, but also to examine whether readers’ preexisting attitudes about the
depicted social groups and the perceived plausibility of the narrative passages will alter the
inﬂuence of the written passages. In addition, the cognitive processes by which people
differentiate between ﬁctional versus nonﬁctional written passages also were examined.
Hypotheses

Taken together, the available theory and evidence suggest that reading positively
toned written passages about various social groups will have more inﬂuence on readers’
beliefs if the passages are represented to be nonﬁctional versus ﬁctional. However, this
effect was thought to depend, at least in part, on readers’ preexisting attitudes about the

depicted social group, whether readers are cognitively busy or not when they read the

28
passages, and the perceived plausibility of the passages.

The general hypotheses of the present research were as follows:

1) When participants who are not cognitively busy read written passages about
members of various social groups, the passages will be more inﬂuential on their beliefs
about the depicted social groups if the passages are represented to be nonﬁctional versus
ﬁctional.

2) When cognitively busy participants read written passages about members of
various social groups, it was expected that they will lack the cognitive capacity to take the
second, more eﬁ‘ortful step to reject or exclude the initially accepted information ﬁom
their mental representations of the depicted social groups. Since cognitively busy
participants will be less capable of rejecting or excluding ﬁctional information from their
representations, the consistency of their beliefs with the narrative passages should not
diﬁ‘er based on the passages’ ﬁctional/nonﬁctional source.

3) Consistent with research by Brock and Green (1995, September), it was
hypothesized that participants who read a passage related to the target belief items will
display greater belief consistency with the passage that they read than participants who
read an unrelated passage.

4) It was expected that participants’ beliefs will be more affected by narrative
passages that they consider to be more plausible.

In addition, for target groups about which the participant population does not have
clear a priori attitudes (i.e., French Canadians), it was expected that:

5) The effect of the ﬁction/nonﬁction manipulation will not be moderated by

participants’ preexisting attitudes about French Canadians since the participants do not

29
hold clearly deﬁned attitudes about French Canadians.

6) Due to the lack of clear a priori attitudes about French Canadians, it was
expected that participants’ preexisting attitudes about French Canadians will not be
signiﬁcantly related to their plausibility judgments of the French Canadian passages nor
will perceived plausibility mediate the relationship between participants’ preexisting
attitudes about French Canadians and their subsequently reported beliefs about French
Canadians.

For target groups that are generally stigmatized in the United States and for which
the participant population holds clear a priori attitudes (i.e., lesbians), it was expected that:

7) More versus less prejudiced individuals will display beliefs that are less
consistent with positively toned lesbian passages that contradict their preexisting attitudes
about lesbians and, furtherrr‘rore, will perceive these passages to be less plausible.

8) It was thought that the inﬂuence of the ﬁctional/nonﬁctional source of the
written passages will be moderated by the preexisting attitudes of the participants, but
only when participants are not cognitively busy. This effect may not be linear, however,
because it is likely that those with moderate levels of prejudice will be most affected by the
positively toned descriptions of a member of a generally stigmatized social group. As
compared to individuals who have moderate levels of prejudice, more prejudiced
individuals may be less aﬁ‘ected by the ﬁctional/nonﬁctional nature of the descriptions
because their preexisting attitudes may cause them to reject any positively toned and thus,
discrepant, descriptions. Likewise, less prejudiced individuals may be less affected by the
source manipulation than those with moderate levels of prejudice because less prejudiced

individuals already agree with the positively toned descriptions. Thus, it is likely that

30

those with moderate levels of prejudice will be the most likely to distinguish between the
ﬁctional/nonﬁctional source of the written information about lesbians.

9) When participants are cognitively busy it was expected that their prejudice level
will not moderate the impact of ﬁctional versus nonﬁctional information about lesbians.
This pattern was expected to occur because, irrespective of their preexisting prejudice
level, the participants will not have enough cognitive capacity available to allow them to
differentiate between the ﬁctional and nonﬁctional nature of the information that they
read.

10) It was predicted that participants’ perceptions of the plausibility of the lesbian
narrative passages will be related to their preexisting prejudice toward lesbians, and more
speciﬁcally, that the perceived plausibility of the narrative passages will mediate the
relationship between participants’ preexisting prejudice toward lesbians and their
subsequently reported beliefs about lesbians. Due to this relationship between preexisting
prejudice and plausibility, it was expected that, similar to how readers’ preexisting
attitudes about lesbians may moderate the passages’ inﬂuence, the perceived plausibility of
the passages also may alter the passages’ inﬂuence.

METHOD
Participants

A total of 433 undergraduates from introductory psychology classes participated in
the experiment in exchange for course credit. Responses of eight participants were
excluded from the data analysis because of problems with the experimental booklets that
they had received. This left a total of 425 male (N = 135) and female (N = 290)

participants whose ages ranged from 17 to 48, with a mean age of 19.14 years. The ethnic

31

composition of the sample was 86% European American, 5% African American, 3%
Asian/Asian American, 3% Latino/Hispanic, 1% French Canadian, and 2% other.
Design

Participants read a single narrative passage about one of three different social
groups [French Canadians, lesbians, or rural Americans (control)]. There were two
versions of the passage nested within each of the social groups, making a total of six
diﬁ‘erent passages. The source for these passages was described as either a ﬁctional short
story or a true-life account (nonﬁctional), and a cognitive busyness manipulation was
either absent or present. All participants were asked to report their beliefs about both the
French Canadian and lesbian social groups. Thus, the experiment had a 2 (narrative
source: ﬁction or nonﬁction) X 2 (cognitive busyness: absent or present) X 6
[(replication: 2 narrative versions per target group) / 3 (narrative passage target: French
Canadian, lesbian, or rural American)] partially-crossed factorial design. Participants were
randomly assigned to conditions. While all of the factors were between-subjects, the
replication factor was nested within narrative passage target. The inﬂuence of preexisting
attitudes about the French Canadian and lesbian target groups was examined in a series of
sub-designs. Speciﬁcally, participants’ beliefs about each social group were analyzed as a
ﬁmction of their preexisting attitudes in addition to the narrative target group, replication,
narrative source, and cognitive busyness manipulations. The possibility that the perceived
plausibility of the narrative passages (irrespective of ltheir putative origins in ﬁction or
nonﬁction) mediated their impact on subsequently reported beliefs was also examined.
Because perceived plausibility may be partly determined by participants’ preexisting

attitudes about the groups, this issue was examined in sub-designs addressing each social

32
group separately.
Materials

Preexisting Attitude Scales. Both Likert-type measures and evaluation
thermometers were used to assess participants’ preexisting attitudes about the two target
social groups (French Canadians and lesbians; see Appendix A).

Two separate Likert-type attitude scales measured attitudes about the two target
groups. A ﬁve-item scale was developed to measure participants’ attitudes about French
Canadians (e.g., “French Canadians are unlikeable people”). In addition, the ﬁve items of
the Attitudes Toward Lesbians - Short F orm (ATL-S), a subscale of the short-form
Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men (ATLG—S; Herek, 1988), was used to measure
attitudes toward lesbians (e.g., “Lesbians just can’t ﬁt into our society”).

The Likert-type attitude measures employed a 7-point response scale, with “1”
signifying “disagree strongly” and “7” signifying “agree strongly.” The items were worded
so that a high score sometimes reﬂected less prejudiced attitudes about the target group
and sometimes reﬂected more prejudiced attitudes. However, the items were scored so
that high values on each scale indicate more prejudiced attitudes about the target group.

The evaluation thermometer was used to measure the purely evaluative aspects of
attitudes about the target groups (Haddock Zanna & Esses, 1993). This single-item
measure has been found to yield scores that are consistent with and as reliable as those
generated via multiple-item measures (Jaccard, Weber, & Lundmark, 1975). For this
measure, participants were asked to “circle a number between 0° and 100° to indicate your
overall evaluation of typical members of a target group.” The extreme ends of the scale,

0° and 100°, were labeled “extremely unfavorable” and “extremely favorable,”

33
respectively, with the adjectives Very,” “quite,” “fairly,” and “slightly” unfavorable or
favorable marked at 10° increments. The midpoint of the scale 50°, was labeled “neither
favorable nor unfavorable.”

Social Group Belief Scales. A total of 12 items were used to measure
participants’ beliefs speciﬁcally related to the topics of the French Canadian and lesbian
narrative passages (see Appendix B). Based on pretesting procedures, the six belief items
regarding French Canadians were unrelated to participants’ preexisting attitudes about
French Canadians. However, for the lesbian belief items, pretesting demonstrated that the
six belief items were counter to_ the preexisting attitudes of the more prejudiced
participants, yet were acceptable to less prejudiced participants. Example belief items for
each target group are: “French Canadians are very focused on their own culture.” (French
Canadian target) and “The love and commitment of two lesbians in a long-term romantic
relationship can be very strong and deep.” (lesbian target). In addition, two items for each
target group were used to assess group-related attitudes that were not directly addressed
within any of the passages [e.g., “I admire French Canadians.” (French Canadian target)
and “Lesbians are generally unpleasant people.” (lesbian target)].

6‘1”

All 16 items employed a 7-point Likert-type response scale, with signifying
“disagree strongly” and “7” signifying “agree strongly.” The belief items were worded so
that a high score sometimes reﬂected beliefs consistent with the passage and sometimes
reﬂected beliefs inconsistent with the passage. Similarly, the attitude items were worded
so that a high score sometimes reﬂected more positive attitudes about the social group and

sometimes reﬂected less positive attitudes about the social group. However, all items

were scored so that high values on each scale indicate either beliefs consistent with the

34

narrative passages or more positive attitudes about the target social group. The attitude
items were included to provide some indication whether the inﬂuence of the narrative
passages generalizes to attitudes about the target groups.

Stimulus Narrative Passages. Stimulus materials were six written passages
featuring either a French Canadian, lesbian, or a rural American (control) protagonist
writing in the third-pason voice (see Appendix C). The passages were very loosely
adapted ﬁ'om actual autobiographical essays found in anthologies published within the past
17 years (Chambers, 1984; Lamontagne, 1995; Martin & Lyon, 1980; Nelson, 1980;
Noun, 1992). The criteria for the use of a passage were that it was a relatively positive
description of a member of a particular social group, could be credibly presented as either
ﬁctional or nonﬁctional, and that it could be edited to approximately one single-spaced
page in length. The content of the four target group passages (2 versions each for the
French Canadian and lesbian target groups) was based on the belief items selected during
the pretesting procedures. Both of the French Canadian passages focused on the
separation of the French Canadian culture ﬁ'om the English Canadian culture, the pride
French Canadians have in their heritage, and the role of the Catholic Church in French
Canadian society. The lesbian passages addressed the deep love and commitment two
women can share for each other, the constraints lesbians feel about displaying their love in
public, and the harassment lesbians face in their day-to-day lives. The content of the
control passages about rural Americans was unrelated to the information contained in
either the French Canadian or lesbian passages, but the control passages were similar to

each other.

35

Perceived Plausibility Scale. Six items were selected from the 12 items of the
Perceived Plausibility Subscale of the Perceived Reality Scale (Elliott et al., 1983, August;
see Appendix D). The Perceived Plausibility Subscale was used to measure the extent to
which participants perceive televised events, characters, and settings to match the events,
people, and settings that exist in the real world. Only the items that are related to events
and characters were selected since the items relating to setting are more applicable to a
televised setting than the setting of written text. In addition, the selected items were
modiﬁed so that they assessed the perceived plausibility of written passages rather than
televised events and so that they measured the perceived plausibility and realism of how
members of a particular social group act (e. g., “The way peOple in their social group really
live their everyday lives is not portrayed very accurately in this passage”). Each item
employed a 7-point Likert-type response scale with “1” signifying “disagree strongly” and
“7” signifying “agree strongly.” The items were worded so that a high value sometimes
reﬂected greater perceived plausibility and sometimes reﬂected lower perceived
plausibility, but they were scored so that a higher score indicates greater perceived
plausibility.

Procedure

Screening for Preexisting Attitudes. During the ﬁrst week of the semester,
1,357 introductory psychology students were given both the Likert-type attitude items and
the evaluation thermometers in order to measure their preexisting attitudes about each of
the target social groups (French Canadians and lesbians; see Appendix A). The order in
which the two types of scales were presented was alternated so that approximately half the

participants responded to the evaluation thermometers ﬁrst while the other half responded

36

to the Likert-type attitude items ﬁrst. The Likert-type attitude items for both of the target
groups as well as the ﬁve items ﬁ'om the Attitudes Toward Gay Men - Short Form (ATG-
S; Herek, 1988) were intermixed. For the evaluation thermometer, ﬁller target groups
that were unrelated to this study were intermixed with the target groups.

The introduction to the screening packet informed participants that the researchers
were interested in determining how people view different social groups. They were
reminded that their responses would be kept strictly conﬁdential. After participants
completed the attitude items, they were told that if they wished to participate in future
research related to the screening questionnaire, they would need to provide additional
information. A personal code was created for the participants who had consented to be
contacted based on their instructor’s name, gender, race/ethnic identity, last four digits of
their student identiﬁcation numbers, and the day of the month on which they were born.
In addition, participants were asked for their ﬁrst name and local phone numbers so that
they could be contacted for the later research.

Because multiple-item measures of participants’ attitudes about French Canadians
and lesbians were collected, a principle-axis factor analysis was performed on the attitude
items relating to these two groups (retaining factors with eigenvalues > 1, using a varimax
rotation) to reduce the data into two meaningful composites. The two composites that
resulted matched the anticipated structure for the French Canadian and lesbian prejudicial
attitude composites (see Appendix A) and had adequate reliabilities (Cronbach’s a = .72

for the 5-item French Canadian composite; Cronbach’s a = .85 for 5-item lesbian

37
composite).l

Examination of the pattern of responses to the evaluation thermometers revealed
reactivity on the part of the participants. Close to 7% of the participants in the screening
sample refused to diﬁ‘erentiate between any of the groups being evaluated (i.e., French
Canadians, lesbians, Latinos/Hispanics, small town USA residents, Irish, and gay men).
Moreover, interviews with the research assistants present at the screening sessions and
who entered the data into computer ﬁles revealed that a sizable minority of the students
expressed concern about completing the evaluation thermometers. Due to these issues
and the fact that the reliability of the French Canadian and lesbian attitude composites
increased only trivially with the inclusion of the relevant evaluation thermometer, the
thermometers were not utilized in subsequent analyses.

Main Experiment. At least three weeks after they had completed the screening
questionnaire, participants were recruited over the phone for the main part of the
experiment.

Participants reported to the laboratory for a study on narrative passages. The
sessions included groups of up to 15 males and females, supervised by either a male or
female experimenter. The gender of the experimenter was varied in order to control for
potential demand characteristics created by seeing only a female or a male in a leadership

position. The experimenter explained to participants that the study dealt with written

 

1When the reliabilities of the French Canadian and lesbian attitude composites were
recalculated based on only participants who completed the ﬁrll experiment (N= 425), the
reliabilities were slightly higher than the reliabilities derived from the screening sample (N
= 1,3 57). For the smaller experimental sample, the Cronbach’s as were .74 for the 5-item
French Canadian attitude composite and .86 for the 5-item lesbian attitude composite.

38

passages and that they were being asked to read one passage and provide their perceptions
of and reactions to it. Participants were told that the purpose of the study was to
determine which features of narrative passages make them most interesting and enjoyable
to read. Next, participants were asked to read and sign a consent form and to begin going
through the experimental booklets.

Participants ﬁrst read an introduction to the narrative passage that revealed its
ostensible source (i.e., ﬁction or nonﬁction). Source information was also provided by
varying the title displayed in bold print at the top of each passage. The introduction for
each of the source conditions was as follows:

Fiction

These passages were selected because they represent ﬁctional, made-up short-

stories dealing with the ways people can be inﬂuenced by the social groups to

which they belong. The stories were made up by various creative writers in order
to portray their view of people’s life experiences. In fact, these stories were
selected ﬁ'om a number of ﬁctional, made-up short-stories that recently appeared
in an anthology entitled Imaginingﬁqeialﬁmumjemlﬁhenﬂeﬁes.

Resemblance to real persons and places is of course coincidental.

Nonﬁctinnal

These passages were selected because they represent true-life accounts of how real

people have been inﬂuenced by the social groups to which they belong. These true

stories were written by people who want to share their actual life experiences with

others. In fact, these passages were selected from a number of nonﬁctional essays

that recently appeared in an anthology entitled ReﬂecticnundRechlections;

39

Wars.

Approximately half of the participants were then given instructions that told them
that they would be tested on the details of the narrative passage that they read (cognitively
busy) while the other halfdid not receive this instruction (not cognitively busy). The
participants in the cognitively busy condition were told that “it is expected that those with
good cognitive ability and reading skills will be able to recall more details ﬁom the
passage than those lacking in these abilities.” This additional task was included in order to
encourage participants to rehearse the details contained in the narrative passages while
they read them. When Gilbert and his colleagues (Gilbert et al., 1988, Exp. 1) used this
manipulation they found that although participants in the cognitively busy condition were
able to recall more of the presented information, they did not have enough capacity left
over to utilize contextual information in their person perception judgments.

After reading the introductory section, participants read a narrative passage about
either a French Canadian, lesbian, or a rural American (control) (see Appendix C). In
order to mask the purpose of the experiment, all participants were asked to rate how

interesting and enjoyable they found the narrative to be after they had ﬁnished reading it
(e.g., “How interesting did you ﬁnd the passage you just read to be?”; see Appendix E).
A total of ﬁve items were used with each response being assessed via a 7-point bipolar
scale.

Next, participants were told that “To better understand how people respond to

What they read it is important to understand the beliefs and knowledge they already
Possess.” To this end, all participants were asked to ﬁll out the Social Group Belief Scales

(see Appendix B). The items for the French Canadian and lesbian target groups were

 

40

internrixed in order to prevent an order effect. After they have answered all of the belief
items, participants were then asked to provide a conﬁdence rating for the judgments they
made about each of the two target groups (i.e., “How conﬁdent are you in the eight
ratings you made about x” with x indicating the target group). The responses to these
conﬁdence items were recorded using 7-point bipolar scales anchored by “very conﬁdent”
and “not very conﬁdent.”

Participants then completed a single-item manipulation check of the source of the
narrative passages: “Without looking back at the passage, as best as you can recall,
please indicate whether the passage was reported to be nonﬁctional (true-life account),
ﬁctional (made-up account), this information was not speciﬁed, or don’t remember.” To
determine whether those under the cognitive busyness manipulation actually memorized
more information than those not cognitively busy, on the next page participants were told
“Without looking back at the passage, please write down any and all details that you can
remember from the passage.”

Next, participants were asked to indicate how much the narrative passage reﬂected

what they actually believe happens in the real world by ﬁlling out the Perceived Plausibility
Scale (see Appendix D).
On the last page of the experimental booklet participants completed standard
demograch items (i.e., gender, age, race/ethnicity, citizenship, and approximate grade
point average). Although it would be preferable to exclude any participant who is a
member of one of the target groups under study, the sexual orientation of the participants
was not assessed due to privacy concerns. So that the participants’ responses could be

matched with the screening survey, participants again answered questions so that their

 

41

personal code could be recreated. The last item of the experimental booklet asked
participants to describe what they believed the purpose of the study to be. When
participants completed the questionnaire, they were thanked for participating in the study,
debriefed, and excused.
RESULTS
Manipulation Checks and Data Reduction
Manipulation Checks. Source Recall. A total of 76% of the participants
accurately recalled the source of the narrative passage that they read, while the remaining
participants either indicated the wrong source (8%), that the source was not speciﬁed
(12%), or that they did not remember the source of the narrative passage (4%).
Unexpectedly, a logistic regression analysis examining the accuracy versus inaccuracy of
participants’ recall of the narrative source as a basis of the target of the narrative passages,
replication nested within target, source, and cognitive busyness revealed that participants
were 3.49 times better at accurately recalling the source of the nonﬁctional than the
ﬁctional passages, Wald z-ratio (1, N = 425) = 23.93, p < .001. Although only marginally
signiﬁcant, the accuracy of participants’ recall of the ﬁctional and nonﬁctional passages
was modiﬁed by the target of the passages (Wald z-ratio (2, N=425) = 5.73, p < .06) as
well as both the target and whether participants were cognitively busy or not, Wald z-ratio
(2, N=425) = 4.81, p < .10 (see Table 1). Examination of the pattern of the odds ratios
saxggested that when not cognitively busy, participants were better at correctly recalling
the source of the ostensibly nonﬁctional versus ﬁctional narrative passages (odds ratio =
3- 2 1 ; Wald z-ratio (1, N=206) = 9.55, p < .01) but the accuracy of their recall did not

ﬁrx—ther vary as a function of the target group, Wald z-ratio (2, N=206) = 3.23, p > .15.

 

 

42

However, when participants were cognitively busy the accuracy of their recall of the
nonﬁctional versus ﬁctional source of the passages differed signiﬁcantly across the three
target groups, Wald z-ratio (2, N = 219) = 6.04, p < .05. When they were cognitively
busy memorizing the details of the narrative passages, participants were signiﬁcantly more
likely to accurately recall the source of the ostensibly nonﬁctional versus ﬁctional passages
when the passages featured a French Canadian versus a lesbian protagonist, Wald z-ratio

( 1, N= 147) = 5.62, p < .05. There was no difference in the likelihood of participants to
better recall the nonﬁctional versus ﬁctional source of the passages when the odds ratios
were compared for the French Canadian and rural American passages (Wald z-ratio (2, N
= 148) < 1, p = n.s.) and the lesbian and rural American passages, Wald z-ratio (2, N

=143) = 2.08, n > .10.

43

Table l - Odds Ratios Demonstrating More Accurate Recall of the Nonfictional
versus Fictional Source of the Passages

 

 

 

Narrative Passage Target
French Rural
Cognitive Busyness Canadian Lesbian American 12 <
Absent
Odds Ratio 1.94, 2.15, 16.25", n.s.
% Accurate - Nonﬁction 84.4 82.4 96.8
% Accurate - Fiction 73.5 68.4 64.9
Present
Odds Ratio 12.69“, 1.30., 465*“, .05
% Accurate - Nonﬁction 93.5 77.1 90.6
% Accurate - Fiction 53.3 72.2 67.5

 

Note. Signiﬁcance of the simple main effect of narrative passage target is indicated in the
fourth column. Within rows, different subscripts indicate there is a signiﬁcant difference in
the odds ratios. Odds ratios signiﬁed by an asterisk indicate that participants were
signiﬁcantly more likely to accurately recall the nonﬁctional source of the narrative
passages than the ﬁctional source of the narrative passages.

Overall, participants were more likely to make errors recalling the source of the
putatively ﬁctional narrative passages as compared to the putatively nonﬁctional passages.
In particular, this was true when participants had read the French Canadian passages when
they were cognitively busy and when they had read the rural American passages,
regardless of whether they were cognitively busy or not. Although most people recalled
the source of the passages correctly, a notable number did not. Therefore, in addition to
the main analyses using the full sample, supplementary analyses were undertaken in which
0111 y the participants who correctly reported the alleged source of the narratives were

included (N = 322; results of these latter analyses are reported in footnotes).

 

44

Cognitive Busyness. In order to verify that participants who were cognitively busy
actually memorized more information than participants who were not cognitively busy,
participants’ recall attempts were coded for their accuracy by two independent judges
blind to the condition under which the free recall task took place. For each piece of
information participants wrote down the judges indicated whether the information was a
speciﬁc detail from the passage, a general idea from the passage, was inconsistent with the
passage, or had already been recalled. Since the judges’ ratings for the number of speciﬁc
details that the participants recalled were signiﬁcantly correlated (r = .62, p < .001), they
were averaged to form an overall index of participants’ recall. The average number of
speciﬁc pieces of information that participants recalled was then examined as a function of
the target of the narrative passages, replication nested within target group, source, and
cognitive busyness. Although participants as a whole did not remember many speciﬁc
details of the passages and while the difference was not extensive, as expected,
participants recalled more speciﬁc details from the passages when they had been
cognitively busy memorizing its details versus not busy (Ms = 4.79 versus 4.24), E(1, 420)

= 4.49, p < .05. There was also a theoretically uninteresting effect of passage content
(E(2, 420) = 19.93, p < .001), such that more details about the rural American passages
were recalled (M = 5.70) than about the French Canadian (M = 4.05) or lesbian passages
(M = 3.85), E(l, 420) = 26.38, p < .001 and EU, 420) = 33.28, p < .001, respectively.
were was no difference in the number of speciﬁc details recalled from the French
Canadian and lesbian passages, E(1, 420) < 1, p = n.s.
Overall, examination of participants’ recall of the speciﬁc details of the passages

vex—iﬁ ed that, as compared to non-busy participants, cognitively busy participants had

 

45

devoted more of their cognitive energy to memorizing the details of the passages.
Perceived lersibility of F ictionaWonﬂctionaI Sources. To verify that
participants viewed the nonﬁctional narrative passages as more plausible than the ﬁctional
passages, perceived plausibility was examined as a function of narrative passage target,
replication nested within target group, narrative source, and cognitive busyness.
Consistent with the predicted effect for the source of the narrative passages, participants
perceived the nonﬁctional passages to be signiﬁcantly more plausible (M = 5.44) than the
ﬁctional passages (M = 5.25), RU, 418) = 4.11, p < .05. However, as compared to the
midpoint of the perceived plausibility scale (4 on a 7-point scale), the ﬁctional (M = 5.25,
1(228) = 20.53, p < .001) as well as the nonﬁctional (M = 5.44, t(l93)= 23.31, p < .001)
passages were perceived to be rather plausible. The perceived plausibility of the passages
also diﬁ‘ered based on the target of the narrative passages, E(2, 418) = 23.53, p < .001.
Participants perceived the French Canadian passages to be signiﬁcantly less plausible (M =
4.94) than both the lesbian (M = 5.59) and rural American passages (M = 5.49), E0, 418)
= 40.72, p < .001 and E( 1, 418) = 28.72, p < .001, respectively. Although the effect of
the target of the narrative passages was somewhat modiﬁed by whether participants were
cognitively busy or not (E(2, 410) = 2.87, p < .06), closer examination revealed that this
pattern occurred only because participants tended to perceive the rural American passages
as less plausible when they had been cognitively busy memorizing the details of the rural
American passages versus not cognitively busy, E(1, 410) = 3.56, p < .10.
Thus, even though as expected participants perceived the nonﬁctional passages to
be more plausible than the ﬁctional passages, both types of passages were perceived to be

rather plausible. Unexpectedly, participants also perceived the French Canadian passages

 

46
to be less plausible than either the lesbian or rural American passages.

Preexisting Attitudes. As had been expected, the distribution of participants’
prejudicial attitudes about lesbians differed from the distribution of their attitudes about
French Canadians (see Figure 1). A dependent sample t-test revealed that participants
were less positive toward French Canadians (M = 3.32, SD = .91) than lesbians (M =
3.07, SD = 1.58), 1(424) = 3.01, n < .01. Furthermore, since the means of participants’
attitudes about both French Canadians and lesbians are signiﬁcantly more positive than the
midpoint of the 7-point response scales (midpoint = 4), it appears that the participants in
this sample were not particularly prejudice toward lesbians (lesbians: 1(424) = 12.06, p <
.001; French Canadian: 1(424) = 15.29, p < .001). Closer examination of the distribution
of participants’ prejudice toward lesbians suggests that only the participants who are
classiﬁed as “most prejudiced” (upper one-third of the attitude distribution) displayed
attitudes about lesbians that were at or more negative (M = 4.97) than the neutral part of

the attitude response scale.

47

Distribution of Average Attitudes
by mnative passage target

French Canadian Attitudes Lesbian Attitudes
200 200

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

150 150+
3100 grow
t ll-
” sol.
r
o J l r l 0 I l 1 J 1 l 1
1m! 2 3 4 S 6 7Most Lem! 2 3 4 5 6 7Mat
Maria Toward Fluid: Canadian Prejudice Toward Leaﬂans

Figure 1 - Distribution of Average Attitudes

However, more important to the objectives of the present research was the fact
that the variance of participants’ preexisting attitudes about lesbians was signiﬁcantly
larger than the variance of participants’ preexisting attitudes about French Canadians,
E( 424, 424) = 3.01, p < .001. Whereas participants’ attitudes about French Canadians
c1 ustered near the neutral part of the scale, their attitudes about lesbians ranged across the
entire scale. The lack of variability in participants’ attitudes about French Canadians could
account for the marginally adequate reliability (Cronbach’s or = .72) that was found for the

French Canadian attitude composite. Although men displayed signiﬁcantly less positive

48

attitudes than women about French Canadians (Ms = 3.62 versus 3.19, E(1, 421) = 21.36,
p < .001) this was not true in regards to their attitudes about lesbians (Ms = 3.28 for men,
3.06 for women), F(1, 421) = 1.88, p > .15.

Overall, as expected, the pattern of participants’ attitudes suggests that the
participants did not have clearly deﬁned, diverse, a priori attitudes about French
Canadians, but they did for lesbians. In addition, it appears that, by and large,
participants’ attitudes about both French Canadians and lesbians were relatively positive.

Data Reduction. The validity of using single belief consistency composites to
measure how consistent participants’ beliefs were with the French Canadian and lesbian
narrative passages was veriﬁed by a principle-axis factor analysis (retaining eigenvalues >
1, varhax rotation). A total of four composite measures resulted (see Appendix B). The
eight French Canadian items were formed into two composites as well as three single-item
measures. The three belief items that were addressed within the French Canadian
narrative passages that related to French Canadians’ focus on their culture (i.e., French
Canadians are very focused on their culture, have a hard time relating to non-French
Canadians, and inevitably have conﬂict with English Canadians) formed a composite
entitled “French Canadian cultural focus.” The reliability of this 3-item composite was
adequate, with Cronbach’s a = .61. The two general French Canadian attitude measures

not directly addressed within the French Canadian passages formed a composite entitled
“general attitudes about French Canadians” (e. g., “I admire French Canadians”). The
reliability of this composite was adequate for a 2-item measure (Cronbach’s a = .57).
Lastly, a total of three belief items that were directly addressed within the French

Canadian narrative passages did not form into composite measures. These single-item

49

measures addressed whether French Canadians would prefer to become more like English
Canadians (entitled “French Canadian isolation”), the role of the Catholic Church in the
daily lives of French Canadians (entitled “power of the church”), and the religiosity of
French Canadians (entitled “French Canadian religiosity").

Based on the factor analysis, the lesbian belief and attitude items were formed into
two composites. The six lesbian belief items directly addressed within the lesbian narrative
passages formed a composite entitled “lesbian belief consistency” (e. g., “The love a lesbian
feels for her partner is not true love”). The two general lesbian attitude items not directly
addressed within the passage formed a second composite entitled “general attitudes about
lesbians” (e. g., “Lesbians are generally unpleasant people”). The reliability of the 6-item
lesbian belief consistency composite was adequate (Cronbach’s a = .79), and the reliability
of the general lesbian attitude composite was also adequate for a 2-item measure
(Cronbach’s a = .59).

A principle-axis factor analysis (retaining eigenvalues > 1, varimax rotation)
revealed that it was appropriate to form a single composite for the six perceived
plausibility measures (e.g., “Events that actually have happened or could happen are
discussed in this passage”; see Appendix D). The reliability of the perceived plausibility
composite was acceptable (Cronbach’s a = .74). Lastly, a factor analysis on participants’

ratings of the narrative passages formed a 4-item composite entitled “passage assessment”
that dealt with participants’ perceptions of the passages’ interest, quality of writing, how
mu ch they enjoyed reading the passages, and how likely they would be to read the
passages if they came across them in a magazine (see Appendix E). The reliability of the

passage assessment composite was strong (Cronbach’s a = .82).

 

50

Statistical Procedures. Consistent with standard practice when testing
hypotheses using multiple regression (e. g., Aiken & West, 1991; Tabachnick & Fidel],
1996; see also Cohen, 1978), sequential multiple regression analyses were used in the
present research to examine the inﬂuence of narrative passage target [French Canadian,
lesbian, or rural American (control)], replication nested within narrative passage target (2
versions for each target group), narrative source (ﬁction or nonﬁction), cognitive busyness
(absent or present), prejudicial attitudes of the participants (linear eﬁ‘ect), and the
curvilinear component of prejudicial attitudes. The curvilinear component of prejudicial
attitudes was included in the analyses in order to test whether moderately prejudiced
participants were more likely to distinguish between the ﬁctional/nonﬁctional source of the
passages than were the least, and most prejudiced participants. The order of entry into the
multiple regression equation was block-wise using the following order: (1) all main
eﬁ‘ects; (2) all nested factors; (3) all two-way interactions; (4) all two-way interactions
involving the nested factor; (5) etc. Due to the step-wise procedure, the error terms
against which the explained variance was compared (and the associated degrees of
freedom for the unexplained variance) changed for each block due to the addition of new
terms in the regression model. Therefore, the reported E values for each statistic represent
the incremental increase in E due to the addition of the relevant main effect(s) or

interaction(s). When signiﬁcant main effects or interactions necessitated the use of simple

effect tests, the explained variance of the simple eﬁ‘ect tests were compared with the mean
square error (and associated degrees of freedom) from the overall test in which the main
eﬂ‘ect or interaction occurred. Lastly, the reported analyses include the nested factor of

replication only when replication moderated the signiﬁcant effect of the main independent

 

5 1
variables.
Main Analyses

Overview. Unfortunately the character of the results ﬁ'om the main analyses that
are presented next are generally not consistent with the pattern that had been predicted.
Moreover, many unanticipated signiﬁcant effects emerged and many of these signiﬁcant
effects involved shifts in the supposed “control” groups who had read passages unrelated
to the target beliefs under investigation. At times, the shiﬁs in the control group were
contingent on whether the participants were cognitively busy memorizing the details of the
unrelated passages or not and even whether the unrelated passages were represented to be
ﬁctional or nonﬁctional. As such, when there are shiﬁs in the control group, the
appropriate theoretical interpretation of the differences between those who read related
versus unrelated narrative passages is tricky at best.

In order to provide the clearest picture of the results, analyses tangential to the
main questions of the present research have been placed in Appendix F. These analyses
examine how much conﬁdence participants had in the belief and attitude judgments they
made about French Canadians and lesbians as well as their assessments of the quality and
interest of the narrative passages.

French Canadian Narrative Passages. To test the inﬂuence of reading passages

featuring a French Canadian, the consistency of participants’ beliefs with the French
Canadian cultural focus composite as well as participants’ subsequently reported general
attitudes about French Canadians were examined. In order to best address the hypotheses
regarding the French Canadian passages, the inﬂuence of reading narrative passages

featuring one of the three target groups (French Canadian, lesbian, and rural American)

 

52

was decomposed into two orthogonal contrasts. The two contrasts were as follows: a
“French Canadian versus control” contrast, comparing the French Canadian condition with
the mean of the lesbian and rural American conditions; and a second “French Canadian
residual” contrast comparing the lesbian condition with the rural American condition.
Examination of the French Canadian versus control contrast shows whether the French
Canadian passages had an effect on beliefs and attitudes about French Canadians over and
above the eﬁ‘ect of reading about completely unrelated groups. The residual contrast
compares the effects of reading about two different, unrelated social groups on beliefs and
attitudes about French Canadians and, as such, was not expected to be signiﬁcant. Due to
the objectives of the present research, any interactions involving the French Canadian
residual contrast are only discussed if they pertain to the results found for the French
Canadian versus control contrast. Thus, the impact of reading about French Canadians on
participants’ subsequently reported beliefs and attitudes about French Canadians was
examined as a ﬁrnction of the two orthogonal contrasts (“French Canadian versus control”
and “French Canadian residual”), replication nested within target group, source of the
narrative passages (ﬁction or nonﬁction), cognitive busyness (absent or present),
participants’ preexisting prejudice toward French Canadians, and ﬁnally, the variability in
participants’ judgments across prejudice level (i.e., curvilinear component of prejudice
toward French Canadians).
One of the primary purposes of the present research was to examine the conditions
under which reading a narrative passage featuring a nonstigmatized, French Canadian
protagonist would affect readers’ beliefs about French Canadians. It was expected that

participants would be most affected by nonﬁctional versus ﬁctional passages, but only

 

53

when they had full cognitive capacity to process the information contained in the narrative
passages. When participants were engaged in a memorization task, it was expected that
they would not have enough cognitive capacity left over to “unbelieve” the ﬁctional
information that they initially accepted. It was also expected that the inﬂuence of the
narrative passages featuring a French Canadian protagonist would not be modiﬁed by the
attitudes the readers had previously reported about French Canadians. Lastly, it was
anticipated that participants who read passages featuring a French Canadian protagonist
would express beliefs that were more consistent with the information contained in the
French Canadian passages than individuals who read passages unrelated to French
Canadians. For these predictions to be supported, it was expected that the three-way
interaction of the French Canadian versus control contrast X source of the narrative
passages X cognitive busyness would be signiﬁcant while this interaction would not be
signiﬁcantly qualiﬁed by participants’ preexisting attitudes about French Canadians.
Because the three single-item measures concerning French Canadians (French
Canadian isolation, the power of the church, and French Canadian religiosity) have
unknown reliability and did not produce any coherent ﬁndings of clear theoretical
signiﬁcance, analyses of these items have been relegated to Appendix G.
Belief Consistency. As expected, participants’ beliefs about French Canadian
cultural focus were more consistent with the French Canadian passages if they actually
read one of the French Canadian passages versus one of the control passages (Ms = 4.30
versus 3.87), E0, 419) = 33.57, p < .001. It was also found that the cultural focus belief
items were perceived as rather critical of French Canadians since more prejudiced

individuals expressed more agreement with these items than did less prejudiced individuals

 

54

(h = .19), E(1, 419) = 25.33, p < .001. It appears that more prejudiced, as compared to
less prejudiced, individuals were more likely to agree that the cultural focus of French
Canadians will inevitably lead to misunderstandings and conﬂict with non-French
Canadians. Although the anticipated interaction between the French Canadian versus
control contrast, source of the narrative passages, and cognitive busyness was not
signiﬁcant (E(1, 398) = 1.16, p > .15), this interaction was unexpectedly qualiﬁed by
participants’ preexisting attitudes about French Canadians, E0, 391) = 4.14, n < .05.2

As a ﬁrst step to fully investigate the hypotheses of the present research, the
pattern of beliefs for participants who read the French Canadian passages was examined.
As a second step the responses of participants who read the French Canadian passages
were compared to the responses of participants who read the control passages. Closer
examination of the beliefs of participants who read the French Canadian passages (see
Figure 2) revealed that more versus less prejudiced participants displayed greater belief
consistency with the cultural focus information contained in the French Canadian passages
(11 = .15), E(1, 391) = 4.94, p < .05. Unexpectedly, participants who read the ﬁctional
passages also tended to display more (rather than less) belief consistency (M = 4.42) than
participants who had read the nonﬁctional passages (M = 4.16), E(1, 391) = 3.48, p < .10.
Although it had been predicted that participants, who read the French Canadian passages
would be most affected by the nonﬁctional versus ﬁctional narrative passages only when

they had full cognitive capacity and regardless of their preexisting attitudes about French

 

’When the responses of only participants who correctly recalled the source of the
narrative passages were examined, no signiﬁcant main effects or interactions were found
that included the source of the narrative passages.

 

 

55
Canadians, the anticipated source X cognitive busyness interaction was clearly
nonsigniﬁcant, E( 1, 391) < 1, p = n.s. Moreover, the beliefs of non-busy participants did
not differ based on whether they had read ﬁctional or nonﬁctional French Canadian
passages, E(l, 391) = 2.13, p > .15. Closer examination revealed that participants’ beliefs
about French Canadians were marginally affected by both cognitive busyness and their
preexisting attitudes about French Canadians when they had read nonﬁctional passages
(E0, 391) = 3.08, n < .10), but not when they had read ﬁctional passages, E(1, 391) < 1, p
= n.s. Simple effect tests showed that after reading nonﬁctional passages, participants’
preexisting attitudes about French Canadians were only related to their subsequently
reported beliefs about French Canadian cultural focus when they were not cognitively busy
(I: = .31, E(1, 391) = 4.85, p < .05) versus when they were cognitively busy (I: = -.04),
E0, 391) < 1, p = n.s. However, closer examination revealed that the French Canadian
cultural beliefs of the least, moderately, and most prejudiced readers of the nonﬁctional
passages did not differ signiﬁcantly based on whether they were cognitively busy or not
(all as > .10). Overall, it appears that when readers of the French Canadian passages made
their belief judgments, these responses were most closely connected to their preexisting

attitudes when they had read the nonﬁctional passages with full cognitive capacity.

 

56

Belief Consistency with French Canadian Cultural Focus
French Canadian Passages
by oogtitive busyness, source, and prejudice toward French Canadians

Not Cognitively Busy Cognitively Busy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

l l l l L 2 1 l l L j
, 1.9 3.3 4.7 1.9 3.3 4.7
Pretoria Toward hatch Cmdlaru (+l- 1.5 SD) Prejudce Toward M Canarians (+I- 1.5 S»

 

 

 

 

Fiction Nonﬁction Fiction Nonﬁction

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2 - Belief Consistency with French Canadian Cultural Focus (French
Canadian Passages)

Figures 3 and 4 display participants’ beliefs about French Canadian cultural focus
as a function of whether they read the French Canadian versus unrelated passages, the
source of the passage, and their preexisting attitudes about French Canadians. Consistent

with the pattern for all participants, when participants were not cognitively busy their
belief consistency with the French Canadian passages was greater when they were more
versus less prejudiced toward French Canadians, (h = .26, E(1, 391) = 22.23, p < .001)

and when they had read the French Canadian passages versus the unrelated passages, E(1,

57

391) = 16.07, p < .001 (see Figure 3). However, the last factor was qualiﬁed by the
source of the narrative passages, E0, 391) = 4.25, p < .05. More speciﬁcally, when non-
busy participants read the French Canadian passages represented to be ﬁctional, their
beliefs were more consistent with the French Canadian passages than when they read
unrelated ﬁctional passages (Ms = 4.46 versus 3.76), E0, 391) = 18.88, p < .001.
However, when the passages were represented to be nonﬁctional, reading a passage about
a French Canadian individual versus a non-French Canadian individual had no effect on
participants’ beliefs about French Canadian cultural focus (Ms = 4.09 versus 3.97), E(1,

391)<1, p = n.s.

58

Bdief Consistency with French Canadian Cultural Focus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not Cognitively Busy
by source, French Canadian vs. control contrast, and
prejudice toward French Canadians
ﬁctional Passages Nonlictional Passages

6 6
5 *' 5 _

r 3 i
4 " r i4 -/

a 3 _/ a 3 -

2 J L A 1 1 2 J l l l l

1.9 33 4.7 1.9 33 4.7

Prejulice Toward Fraud: Canon-(+1. 1.5 SD) Prejudice Toward Ranch Cmsdans (+1- LS SD)

 

 

Fr. Cartad'rm Control Fr. Canadian Camel

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3 - Belief Consistency with French Canadian Cultural Focus (Not Cognitively
Busy)

59

Belief Consistency with French Canadian Cultural Focus
Cognitively Busy
by source, French Canadian vs. control contrast,
and prejudice toward French Canadians

Fictional Passages Nonﬁctional Passages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

L

 

2 1 1 1 1 2 1. l l 1 1
1.9 3.3 4.7 1.9 3.3 4.7

We: Toward Fraud: Curadans (+l- 1.5 SD) Prejudice Toward Hutch Csnarlans (+I- 1.5 SD)

 

 

 

Fem-dim Control Fr. Canadian Carnal

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4 - Belief Consistency with French Canadian Cultural Focus (Cognitively
Busy)

When participants had been cognitively busy memorizing the details of the
passages that they had read, the pattern of results differed from the pattern for non-busy
participants (see Figure 4). Like participants who were not cognitively busy, the beliefs of
cognitively busy participants were more consistent with the cultural focus of the French
Canadian passages when they were more prejudiced toward French Canadians versus less
prejudiced toward French Canadians (h = .13), E(1, 391) = 6.31, p < .05. However,

unlike the pattern for non-busy participants, the beliefs of cognitively busy readers were

60

more consistent with the French Canadian passages when they had actually read the
French Canadian passages (M = 4.30) as compared to the unrelated passages (M = 3.87,
E0, 391) = 17.04, p < .001), regardless oftheir source, E(1, 391) < l, p = n.s.

Overall, readers’ beliefs about French Canadians were not more affected by
reading nonﬁctional versus ﬁctional French Canadian passages when they had ﬁrll
cognitive capacity. In fact, readers’ beliefs were somewhat more aﬁ‘ected by reading
ﬁctional as compared to nonﬁctional French Canadian passages. Although reading the
French Canadian passages had an effect on most readers’ beliefs about French Canadians,
over and above the effect of reading unrelated, control passages, for some reason non-
busy readers of the nonﬁctional French Canadian passages failed to incorporate the
presented information into their mental representations of French Canadians.

General Attitudes about French Canadians. A secondary hypothesis of the
present research addressed whether reading narrative passages featuring a French
Canadian protagonist would inﬂuence participants’ general attitudes about French
Canadians. Although it was expected that beliefs about French Canadians would be more
likely affected by reading French Canadian passages than would more complex attitude
structures about French Canadians, it was still of interest to determine whether the impact
of reading narrative passages generalizes to participants’ attitudes about French
Canadians.

In general, reading the French Canadian passages caused participants to
subsequently express more favorable attitudes about French Canadians, as compared to
the control group, (Ms = 4.33 versus 4.04), H1, 419) = 8.74, p < .01. As would be

expected, less versus more prejudiced participants also expressed more favorable attitudes

61

about French Canadians (h = -.37), F,(1, 419) = 99.82, p < .001. However, participants’
post-exposure attitudes about French Canadians did not vary as a ﬁrnction of the French
Canadian versus control contrast, source, and cognitive busyness, E0, 398) < 1, p =n.s.3

Perceived Plausibility. In the present research it was hypothesized that readers’
beliefs about French Canadians would be most affected by passages that they considered
to be more plausible. Furthermore, it was expected that since the participants lacked
clearly deﬁned a priori attitudes about French Canadians, their plausibility judgments of
the French Canadian passages would not be signiﬁcantly related to their preexisting
attitudes about French Canadians nor would perceived plausibility mediate the relationship
between participants’ preexisting attitudes and their subsequently reported beliefs about
French Canadians. To begin examining these hypotheses, participants’ perceptions of the
plausibility of the French Canadian passages are examined ﬁrst. Since only participants
who actually read the French Canadian passages assessed their plausibility, the orthogonal
contrasts included in the preceding analyses were not utilized when investigating the
effects of perceived plausibility. Thus, the plausibility ratings of the French Canadian
passages were analyzed as a ﬁtnction of the source of the narrative passages (ﬁction or
nonﬁction), cognitive busyness (absent or present), participants’ preexisting prejudice
toward French Canadians, and, ﬁnally, the variability in judgments created by participants’
preexisting prejudice level (curvilinear component of prejudice).

As expected, participants’ preexisting attitudes about French Canadians were not

 

3When examining the responses of only participants who correctly recalled the
source of the narrative passages that they read, source was not found to have a signiﬁcant
main eﬁ‘ect nor did it interact with any other variables.

62

directly related to their perceptions of the perceived plausibility of the French Canadian
passages (11 = -.04), E(l, 137) < l, n = n.s. However, there was some indication that
readers’ perceptions of the plausibility of the passages varied based on their preexisting
attitudes about French Canadians (curvilinear effect) and whether they were cognitively
busy or not, E0, 123) = 2.96, p < .09. Follow-up examination on the least, moderately,
and most prejudiced participants found that, as compared to their non-busy counterparts,
the most prejudiced participants perceived the French Canadian passages to be more
plausible when they had been cognitively busy memorizing the details of the passages (Ms
= 4.64 versus 5.09), E0, 123) = 3.98, p < .05. There were no differences in the least and
moderately prejudiced participants’ perceptions of the plausibility of the French Canadian
passages based on whether they had been cognitively busy or not (least prejudiced
participants: Ms = 5.06 versus 4.91, E(1‘, 123) < 1, p = n.s.; moderately prejudiced

participants: Ms = 4.85 versus 4.94, E(1, 123) < 1, p = n.s.).‘

 

’When the perceived plausibility of the French Canadian passages was examined it
appeared that participants perceived version 1 to be somewhat more plausible than version
2, E( 1, 137) = 2.75, p < .10. However, this effect of replication was modiﬁed by the
curvilinear component of participants’ attitudes about French Canadians, E(1, 123) = 5.18,
n < .05. The pattern of responses suggested that only the most prejudiced individuals
perceived version 1 to be more plausible than version 2 (Ms = 5.15 versus 4.68), E(1, 123)
= 4.47, p < .05. The least and moderately prejudiced participants did not differentiate
between the two versions in terms of perceived plausibility (both Es < 1, p = n.s.). Also
modifying the effect of version was whether participants were cognitively busy or not and
how prejudiced participants were toward French Canadians, E(l, 123) = 4.17, p < .05.
Closer examination revealed that when participants were cognitively busy memorizing the
details of the French Canadian passages they perceived version 1 to be more plausible than
version 2 (Ms = 5.22 versus 4.83, E0, 123) = 5.25, p < .05. However, for non-busy
participants there was a cross-over interaction between replication and prejudice toward
French Canadians, E0, 123) = 4.86, p < .05. When participants were not cognitively
busy, their attitudes about French Canadians were not related to their perceived
plausibility judgments for version 1 (h = .20, E(l, 123) = 1.61, p > .15) but were
somewhat related to their reactions to version 2 (h = -.25), E(1, 123) = 3.66, p < .10.

63

As the next step in investigating the role of perceived plausibility, participants’
beliefs about French Canadian cultural focus after reading the French Canadian passages
were examined to see if participants were more affected by passages they considered to be
more plausible. More speciﬁcally, the consistency of participants’ beliefs with the French
Canadian cultural focus composite was examined as a function of the perceived plausibility
of the French Canadian narrative passages, replication, source of the passages, and
whether participants were cognitively busy or not. Contrary to the idea that participants’
beliefs would be more consistent with passages that they perceived having greater
plausibility, the relationship of the plausibility of the French Canadian passages with
participants’ subsequently reported beliefs about French Canadians was not signiﬁcant ([1
= .14), E(1, 138) = 1.40, p > .15. However, a marginally signiﬁcant three-way interaction
was found between source, cognitive busyness, and the perceived plausibility of the
French Canadian passages (E(l, 134) = 2.94, p < .10), suggesting that perceived
plausibility did at least somewhat moderate the inﬂuence of the written passages (see
Figure 5). Although a somewhat similar interaction was found when participants’
attitudes about French Canadians were examined instead of the perceived plausibility of
the French Canadian passages, closer examination suggested a different pattern for the
effect of perceived plausibility as compared to the effect of attitudes about French
Canadians. Unlike the pattern when examining the effect of attitudes about French

Canadians, perceived plausibility did not play a role when participants were not cognitively

 

Examination based on participants’ prejudice levels (least, moderately, and most
prejudice) did not reveal any signiﬁcant differences between the perceived plausibility of
version 1 versus version 2 when participants were not cognitively busy (all as > .10).

64

busy (E( 1, 134) < 1, p = n.s.), but when participants were cognitively busy the effects of
the ﬁctional versus nonﬁctional passages were marginally qualiﬁed by the perceived
plausibility of the French Canadian passages, E(1, 134) = 3.59, p < .10. When cognitively
busy participants memorized the details of the passages, participants who perceived the
passages to be less versus more plausible subsequently expressed beliefs less consistent
with the nonﬁctional passages (h = .52, E(1, 134) = 6.17, p < .05) but not the ﬁctional
passages (12 == .03), F(1, 134) < l, p = n.s. Thus, unlike the pattern where participants’
preexisting attitudes about French Canadians were only related to their subsequently
reported beliefs about French Canadians when they were non-busy while reading the
nonﬁctional passages, participants’ perceptions of the plausibility of the French Canadian
passages were only related to their post-exposure beliefs when they had been cognitively

busy memorizing the details of the nonﬁctional French Canadian passages.

65

Belief Consistency with French Canadian Cultural Focus
by cognitive busyness, source, and perceived plausibility

 

 

of French Canadian passages
Not Cognitively Busy Cognitively Busy
6 6
l
s - 5 .

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 l 1 l l

 

 

 

 

 

J l l 1 1 2
2 3.8 4.9 6.0 3.8 4.9 6.0
Perceived 11:31!!th (+/- 1.5 SD) Perceived Plaudlillty (+I- 1.5 SD)
ﬁca'on Nonﬁction Fiction Natﬁctiat

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 5 - Belief Consistency with French Canadian Cultural Focus (with Perceived
Plausibility)

Overall, the pattern of results suggests that perceived plausibility had very little to
do with the inﬂuence of narrative passages featuring a French Canadian protagonist. First,
the majority of readers did not rely on the plausibility of the French Canadian passages
when they reported their post-exposure beliefs about French Canadians. The only group
that appeared to rely on the plausibility of the French Canadian passages were cognitively
busy readers of the nonﬁctional passages. Second, as predicted, perceived plausibility was

not directly related to readers’ preexisting attitudes about French Canadians nor did

66

perceived plausibility play a mediational role in the relationship between participants’
preexisting attitudes about French Canadians and their later reported beliefs about French
Canadian cultural focus. Since signiﬁcant relationships were not found between readers’
attitudes about French Canadians and their perceptions of the plausibility of the French
Canadian passages (11 = -.04) nor between plausibility and readers’ subsequently reported
beliefs (3 - .14), perceived plausibility, by deﬁnition, cannot play a mediational role.
Participants’ attitudes about French Canadians, on the other hand, had the same
relationship with their beliefs about French Canadian cultural focus no matter whether the
perceived plausibility of the French Canadian passages was controlled for (Q = .17, E(1,
137) = 4.37, p < .05) or not (Q = .17).

Summmy. Readers of the French Canadian passages were not more affected by
the nonﬁctional versus ﬁctional passages when they had ﬁrll cognitive capacity. In fact, in
a pattern exactly opposite to what was predicted, the ﬁctional passages, as compared to
the nonﬁctional passages, had a somewhat greater effect on both the cognitively busy and
non-busy readers. Generally, as compared to reading unrelated, control passages, reading
the French Canadian passages affected most readers’ beliefs about French Canadian
cultural focus as well as made the readers more favorable toward French Canadians. The
only exception to this statement was non-busy readers of the nonﬁctional French Canadian
passages who failed to utilize the presented information when reporting their post-
exposure beliefs about French Canadian cultural focus. Overall, perceived plausibility had
very little to do with the inﬂuence of narrative passages featuring a French Canadian
individual. The only readers that appeared to rely on their plausibility judgments when

subsequently reporting their beliefs about French Canadians were cognitively busy readers

67

who had memorized the details of the nonﬁctional passages.

Lesbian Narrative Passages. To test the inﬂuence of reading passages featuring
a lesbian, the consistency of participants’ beliefs with the lesbian belief composite as well
as participants’ subsequently reported general attitudes about lesbians were examined. In
order to best address the hypotheses regarding the lesbian passages, the effect of reading
narrative passages featuring one of three target groups (lesbian, French Canadian, and
mral American) was decomposed into two orthogonal contrasts. The two contrasts were
as follows: a “lesbian versus control” contrast, comparing the lesbian condition with the
mean of the French Canadian and rural American conditions; and a second “lesbian
residual” contrast comparing the French Canadian condition with the rural American
condition. Examination of the lesbian versus control contrast shows whether the lesbian
passages had an effect on beliefs and attitudes about lesbians over and above the effect of
reading about completely unrelated groups. The residual contrast compares the effects of
reading about two different, unrelated social groups on beliefs and attitudes about lesbians
and, as such, was not expected to be signiﬁcant. Due to the objectives of the present
research, any interactions involving the lesbian residual contrast are only discussed if they
pertain to the results found for the lesbian versus control contrast. Thus, the impact of
reading about lesbians on participants’ subsequently reported beliefs and attitudes about
lesbians was examined as a ﬁrnction of the two orthogonal contrasts (“lesbian versus
control” and “lesbian residual”), replication nested within target group, source of the
narrative passages (ﬁction or nonﬁction), cognitive busyness (absent or present),
participants’ preexisting prejudice toward lesbians, and ﬁnally, the variability in

participants’ judgments across prejudice level (i.e., curvilinear component of prejudice

 

68
toward lesbians).

One of the primary purposes of the current research was to examine the conditions
under which reading a narrative passage featuring a lesbian protagonist would affect
readers’ beliefs about lesbians. First, it was hypothesized that more versus less prejudiced
individuals would display less belief consistency with the positively toned lesbian passages
that contradicted their preexisting attitudes about lesbians. In addition, it was expected
that participants would be most inﬂuenced by nonﬁctional versus ﬁctional passages, but
only when they had ﬁall cognitive capacity to process the information contained in the
passages. It was also thought that when the participants had full cognitive capacity, the
impact of the narrative passages featuring a lesbian would be modiﬁed by readers’
preexisting attitudes about lesbians. More speciﬁcally, it was expected that moderately
prejudiced participants would be more likely to distinguish between the
ﬁctional/nonﬁctional source of the written information than would either the least or most
prejudiced participants. However, when participants were cognitively busy memorizing the
details of the passages, it wasexpected that they would not have enough capacity left over
to “unbelieve” the ﬁctional information that they initially accepted nor would their
preexisting attitudes about lesbians modify the. inﬂuence of the passages. Lastly, it was
anticipated that participants who actually read passages featuring a lesbian protagonist
would express beliefs more consistent with the information contained in the lesbian
passages than readers who read passages unrelated to lesbians. For these predictions to be
supported, it was expected that the ﬁve-way interaction of the lesbian versus control
contrast X source of the narrative passages X cognitive busyness X variability in

participants’ judgments across prejudice level (i.e., curvilinear component of prejudice

69
toward lesbians) would be signiﬁcant.

Belief Consistency. Contrary to what was predicted, readers of the lesbian
passages did not uniformly express beliefs more consistent with the lesbian passages than
did readers of the unrelated, control passages, E(1, 418) = 2.03, p > .15. However, as
expected, more prejudiced participants did display less belief consistency with the lesbian
narrative passages than less prejudiced participants (12 = -.82), E(l, 418) = 462.94, p <
.001. Furthermore, this effect was qualiﬁed by several higher-order interactions. In
particular, the highest interaction found to be significant involved the lesbian versus
control contrast, source, cognitive busyness, and prejudice toward lesbians, E0, 390) =
4.38, p < .05.’ The hypothesized ﬁve-way interaction involving the curvilinear component
of participants’ prejudice toward lesbians did not reach signiﬁcance and, thus, eliminated
the possibility that moderately prejudiced non-busy participants would be more likely to
distinguish between the ﬁctional/nonﬁctional nature of the information presented in the
lesbian passages than would their more and less prejudiced counterparts, E0, 388) < l, p
= n.s. Because the effect of reading the lesbian passages was of paramount theoretical
importance, the complex signiﬁcant four-way interaction found in this analysis has been
broken down by ﬁrst examining the response of participants who had read the lesbian
narrative passages. Second, the response of participants who had read the lesbian
passages was compared to the response of participants who had read the unrelated,

control passages.

 

’Examination of only participants who correctly recalled the source of the narrative
they had read found that the pattern of results was somewhat weaker but largely
unchanged.

70

Examination of readers’ beliefs about lesbians after reading the lesbian passages
revealed that the interactions between source X cognitive busyness X prejudice toward
lesbian and between source X cognitive busyness were not signiﬁcant, E(1, 390) < 1, p =
n.s. and E(1, 390) < 1, p = n.s., respectively. Thus, the possibilities that only non-busy
participants were differentially affected by reading the nonﬁctional versus ﬁctional lesbian
passages and that participants’ preexisting attitudes about lesbians would moderate this
effect were eliminated (see Figure 6). However, it was found that less versus more
prejudiced participants displayed greater belief consistency with the lesbian passages (h = -
.74, E(1, 390) = 130.56, p < .001), while this was somewhat true for cognitively busy
versus non-busy participants (Ms = 5.52 versus 5.21), E(l, 390) = 3.21, p < .10.
Moreover, these effects were qualiﬁed by a signiﬁcant interaction between cognitive
busyness and participants’ preexisting prejudice toward lesbians, E(1, 390) = 4.13, p < .05.
Closer examination showed that non-busy participants’ prejudice toward lesbians was
more related to their subsequently reported beliefs about lesbians than was the prejudice of
cognitively busy participants (125 = -.85 versus -.60). In fact, simple effect tests revealed
that the most prejudiced participants were more likely to reject the passage information
(i.e., to not agree with the belief items) if they were not cognitively busy, as compared to
cognitively busy (Ms = 3.91 versus 4.89, E(1, 390) = 18.11, p < .001) and, although not
signiﬁcant by conventional standards, this tendency appeared to be somewhat stronger for
ﬁction than nonﬁction. The belief consistency for the least and moderately prejudiced

individuals did not differ based on whether they were cognitively busy or not (both Es < 1,

p = n.s.).

71

Belief Cons'utency with Lesbian Passages
Lesbian Passages
by cognitive busyness, source, and prejudice toward lesbians

Not Cognitively Busy Cognitively Busy

 

 

l

6-\

Es; "\

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 1 1 1 1 3 l 1 l 1 j

3 0,7 3.1 5.5 0.7 3.1 5.5

PrejudiceToward Leslians (+1- r.s so) PWPlatuse Tm"! Wan-(H- 1.580)
Fiction Nonﬁction Fiction Nonﬁction

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 6 - Belief Consistency with Lesbian Passages (Lesbian Passages)

Figures 7 and 8 show the amount of lesbian belief consistency that participants
expressed as a function of whether they had read the lesbian passages or the unrelated,
control passages, whether the passages were ﬁctional or nonﬁctional, and as a ﬁmction of
their prejudice toward lesbians. Although it was expected that reading the control
passages (French Canadian and rural American) would not inﬂuence participants’ beliefs
about lesbians, this in fact did occur. More speciﬁcally, the beliefs about lesbians of the
control group were signiﬁcantly inﬂuenced by the source of the control passages, whether

they were cognitively busy or not, and their prejudice toward lesbians, E(1, 390) = 4.59, p

72
< .05. When non-busy participants read passages unrelated to lesbians, both their
preexisting prejudice about lesbians and the source of the unrelated passages affected their
subsequently reported beliefs about lesbians, E(1, 390) = 156.84, p < .001 and F(1, 390) =
4.75, p < .05, respectively (see Figure 7). Moreover, these effects were qualiﬁed by an
interaction between the source of the unrelated passages and the prejudice of the
participants toward lesbians, E( 1, 390) = 4.94, p < .05. Examination of the pattern of
beliefs for the non-busy control participants showed that reading the ﬁctional control
passages seemed to dampen the relationship of participants’ preexisting prejudice toward
lesbians and their subsequently reported beliefs about lesbians (h = -.69), as compared to
the nonﬁctional control passages (12 = -.98). In fact, simple effect tests found that reading
the unrelated ﬁctional versus nonﬁctional passages caused the least and moderately
prejudiced individuals to express signiﬁcantly more negative beliefs about lesbians (least
prejudiced: Ms = 5.94 versus 6.39, E(1, 390) = 3.88, p < .05; moderately prejudiced: Ms
= 5.14 versus 5.68, H1, 390) = 4.70, p < .05). The beliefs about lesbians of the most
prejudiced participants did not differ based on the source of the control passages when
they were not cognitively busy, E(1, 390) < 1, p = n.s. Since the beliefs about lesbians of
cognitively busy readers of the control passages were only related to their preexisting
attitudes about lesbian (h = -.90, E(1, 390) = 190.19, p < .001; see Figure 8), it appears
that the shift in the beliefs about lesbians of the control group occurred mainly because, as
compared the other readers of the control passages, non-busy readers of the ﬁctional

control passages relied less on their preexisting prejudice when making their belief

j u dgments.

73

Belief Consistency with Lesbian Passages
Not Cogrnitively Busy
by source, lesbian vs control contrast, and prejudice toward lesbiarns

Fictional Passages Nonﬁctional Passages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

J 3 1 4 l 1 l

 

 

3 J l l l
0., 3.1 55 0.1 3.1 5.5

Prejudloe'lbward Iahln(+l-1.58D) Pull-doe Toward unbias- (+/- 1.580)

 

 

Leslian Control Winn Carnal

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 7 - Belief Consistency with Lesbian Passages (Not Cognitively Busy)

74

Belief Consistency with Lesbian Passages
Cogrnitively Busy
by source, lesbian vs. control contrast, and prejudice toward lesbians

Fictional Passages Nonﬁctional Passages

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 L l 1
3 0.7 3.1 5.5 0-7 3.1 5.5
PrejudiceToward Inblarns(+I-1.SSD) Pumice Toward Leslians (+1. 1.581))
Lesbian Control Lesbian Control

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 8 - Belief Consistency with Lesbian Passages (Cognitively Busy)

The differences in participants’ beliefs about lesbians based on whether they read
the lesbian versus control passages are hard to interpret given the variations found in the
control group. However, for the sake of completeness, the analyses comparing the beliefs
01" non-busy participants who read the lesbian versus control passages are examined next
(3 ee Figure 7). When participants were not cognitively busy, the consistency of their
beli efs with the lesbian passages was greater when they were less versus more prejudiced
‘OWaz-d lesbians (h = .35, 13(1, 390) = 257.97, p, < .001) and when they had read any of

the nonﬁctional versus ﬁctional passages, regardless of the social group depicted (Ms =

75

5.30 versus 5.18), E(1, 390) = 4.18, p < .05. However, these effects were qualiﬁed by a
sigrniﬁcant interaction between whether participants had read the lesbian versus control
passages, the source of the passages, and participants’ prejudice toward lesbians, E(1,
390) - 5.29, n <.05. For ﬁctional passages, the relationship between participants’
preexisting prejudice toward lesbians and their subsequently reported beliefs about
lesbians (H1, 390) = 103.18, p < .001) varied somewhat depending on whether the
participants had read the lesbian versus control passages, E0, 390) = 2.75, p < .10.
Closer examination revealed a stronger relationship when non-busy participants had read
the lesbian ﬁctional passages versus the control ﬁctional passages (12s = -.99 versus -.69),
although ﬁnrther inspection found no signiﬁcant differences for the least, moderately, and
most prejudiced individuals based on reading the lesbian versus control passages (all as >
.15). Due to the pattern of beliefs about lesbians revealed when the control and lesbian
readers were examined separately, the interaction just discussed was probably more a
function of change caused by reading the ﬁctional control passages than actual change
caused by reading the lesbian passages. When non-busy participants read nonﬁctional
lesbian passages, the only thing that affected their beliefs about lesbians was their
preexisting prejudice toward lesbians (h = -.89), EU, 390) = 153.58, p < .001. Reading
the lesbian nonﬁctional passages, as compared to the control nonﬁctional passages, did not
affect participants’ beliefs about lesbians, E(l, 390) < 1, p = n.s.

Since the variations in the beliefs about lesbians of the control group were limited
to participants not cognitively busy, comparisons between cognitively busy participants
who had read the lesbian versus control passages can be made with greater conﬁdence

(see Figure 8). As expected, cognitively busy participants displayed beliefs more

76

consistent with the lesbian passages when they had read the lesbian passages versus the
unrelated, control passages, E(1, 390) = 5.66, a < .05. However, this effect was modiﬁed
by how prejudiced participants were toward lesbians, E(1, 390) = 6.13, p < .05. In what
appears to be a recurring theme, cognitively busy readers of the lesbian passages relied
less on their preexisting prejudice toward lesbians when they subsequently made belief
judgments about lesbians, as compared to the control group, (115 - -.60 versus -.90).
Closer examination showed that the most prejudiced participants were more likely to
accept the information presented in the passage (i.e., agree with the belief items) if they
had been cognitively busy memorizing the details of the lesbian passages versus the
control passages (M = 4.89 versus 4.13, respectively, E( 1, 390) = 15.01, p < .001; for
least and moderately prejudiced participants both Es < l, p = n.s.). As would be predicted
from the response of the readers of the lesbian passages, source did not affect the beliefs
about lesbians of cognitively busy participants who had read the lesbian versus control
passages, E(1, 390) < l, p = n.s.

Overall, readers’ beliefs about lesbians were not more affected by reading
nonﬁcticnal versus ﬁctional passages featuring a lesbian when they had full cognitive
capacity. However, being cognitively busy memorizing the details of the positively toned
lesbian passages caused the most prejudiced readers to express beliefs more consistent
with the passage information, as compared to both non-busy readers and the control
group. Although it appears that the beliefs about lesbians of non-busy readers were not
affected by the lesbian passages, as compared to the control passages, this statement is
made rather cautiously because of a shift in the control group caused primarily by the non-

busy readers of the ﬁctional, unrelated passages.

77

General Attitudes about Lesbians. A secondary hypothesis of the present research
addressed whether reading narrative passages featuring a lesbian protagonist would
inﬂuence participants’ general attitudes about lesbians. Although it was expected that
readers’ beliefs about lesbians would be more likely affected by reading lesbian passages
than would more complex attitude structures about lesbians, it was still of interest to
determine whether the impact of reading narrative passages generalizes to participants’
attitudes about lesbians. Not surprisingly, participants’ preexisting prejudice toward
lesbians was signiﬁcantly related to their subsequently reported attitudes about lesbians (h
= -.93), E( 1, 419) = 354.79, p < .001. However, the relationship between participants’
prejudice toward lesbians and their subsequently reported general attitudes about lesbians
was qualiﬁed by a three-way signiﬁcant interaction with whether participants had read a
passage featuring a lesbian protagonist versus an unrelated, control passage and by
whether they were cognitively busy or not, E(1, 398) = 4.27, p < .05‘ (see Figure 9).
Since this interaction was not further qualiﬁed by the source of the narrative passages
(E(1, 391) < 1, p = n.s.) it appears that participants’ attitudes about lesbians were not

affected by the source of the lesbian passages that they had read.

 

‘When examining only participants who correctly recalled the source of the
narrative passage that they had read the pattern of results remained the same.

78

General Attitudes about Lesbians
by cognitive busyness, lesbian vs control contrast, and prejudice toward lesbians

Not Cognitively Busy Cognitively Busy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 l 1 1

 

 

1 1 1 1 3 l
3 0.7 3.1 5.5 0-7 3.1 5.5
Prehrdlce Toward lesbians (+l- 1.5 SD) Prejudice Toward Lesliarns (+/- 1.5 SD)

 

 

leslian Control Ledrian Control

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 9 - General Attitudes about Lesbians

Examination of participants’ attitudes about lesbians revealed that even after

reading the lesbian passages, participants’ general attitudes about lesbians were only

related to their preexisting prejudice toward lesbians (12 = -.85), E(1, 398) = 101.99, p <

.001. Since this relationship was not qualiﬁed by whether the participants had memorized

the details of the lesbian passages or not (E(1, 398) = 1.90, p > .15), it appears that for

some reason the control participants’ attitudes about lesbians were differentially affected

by whether they had been cognitively busy or not when they read the unrelated passages.

When investigating whether participants’ attitudes about lesbians were affected by

79

reading the lesbian passages over and above the effect of reading the unrelated, control
passages, care must be taken because participants’ attitudes about lesbians varied
depending on whether they had read the French Canadian or rural American control
passages. More speciﬁcally, a three-way interaction showed that participants’ attitudes
about lesbians differed as a function of which control passage they read, whether they
were cognitively busy or not, and their preexisting prejudice toward lesbians, E(1, 398) =
5.62, p < .05. Closer examination revealed that when participants had read the French
Canadian passages, their subsequently reported attitudes about lesbians were only
dependent on their preexisting prejudice toward lesbians (h = -1.00, E(1, 398) = 128.32, p
< .001), not whether they had been cognitively busy or not, E(1, 398) < 1, n = n.s.
However, for participants who had read the rural American passages, their attitudes about
lesbians varied as a function of whether they had been cognitively busy or not and as a
function of their preexisting prejudice toward lesbians, E(1, 398) = 6.41, p < .05. When
participants had read the rural American passages, non-busy participants, as compared to
cognitively busy participants, relied less on their preexisting prejudice toward lesbians
when they made their subsequent attitude judgments (hs = -.74 versus -1.17). Closer
inspection revealed that the most prejudiced readers expressed somewhat more positive
attitudes about lesbians when they had not been cognitively busy memorizing the details of
the rural American control passage versus cognitively busy (Ms = 4.24 versus 3.73), E(1,
398) = 2.98, p < .10. The attitudes about lesbians of the moderately and least prejudiced
participants did not differ based on whether they were cognitively busy or not (both Es <
1, p = n.s.). Thus, it appears that something about simply reading versus memorizing the

details of the rural American control passages caused participants to rely less on their

80

preexisting prejudice toward lesbians and, in fact, the most prejudiced participants were
somewhat more positive in their subsequently expressed attitudes about lesbians when
they had been non-busy versus cognitively busy.

When the attitudes about lesbians of the control participants were examined after
collapsing across the French Canadian and rural American passages, only participants’
preexisting prejudice toward lesbians was signiﬁcantly related to their later reported
general attitudes about lesbians (h = -.97), E(1, 398) = 258.68, p < .001. However,
although not signiﬁcant by conventional standards (E(1, 398) = 2.32, p < .15), compared
to cogrnitively busy participants who had memorized the details of the control passages (b
= -1.06), the attitudes about lesbians of non-busy participants were less related to their
preexisting prejudice toward lesbians (h = -.88). Based on the differences in attitudes
about lesbians based on which of the control passages participants had read, it appears that
this ﬁnding is primarily due to non-busy participants who had read the rural American
passages. Therefore, comparisons must be cautiously made between the general attitudes
about lesbians of non-busy participants who had read the lesbian passages versus the
unrelated, control passages.

Examination of participants’ general attitudes about lesbians based on whether
they had read the lesbian versus control passages and were cognitively busy or not, found
that participants’ general attitudes about lesbians were largely unaffected by reading the
lesbian versus control passages (see Figure 9). More speciﬁcally, non-busy participants’
attitudes about lesbians were only affected by their preexisting prejudice toward lesbians
(h = -.91, E( 1, 398) = 178.15, p < .001), not by whether they had read the lesbian versus

control passages, E(1, 398) < 1, p = n.s. However, based on the shifts in the attitudes

81

about lesbians of the control group, this lack of effect for the lesbian passages could be
due to non-busy readers of the rural American passages relying less on their preexisting
prejudice when making their subsequent attitude judgments about lesbians, as compared to
their cogrnitively busy counterparts. When participants were cognitively busy there was
some eﬁ‘ect of having read the lesbian versus unrelated passages. In fact, it appears that
memorizing the details of the lesbian versus control passages caused cognitively busy
participants to rely less on their preexisting prejudice toward lesbians when they
subsequently reported their attitudes about lesbians (123 = -.72 versus -1.06), E(1, 398) =
4.86, p < .05. Closer examination showed that consistent with the pattern for participants’
beliefs about lesbians, memorizing the details of the lesbian passages caused the most
prejudiced cogrnitively busy participants to express more positive attitudes about lesbians,
as compared to the control group (M = 4.70 versus 3.96), E(1, 398) = 8.50, p < .01. The
attitudes about lesbians of the least and moderately prejudiced cognitively busy
participants did not differ based on whether they had read the lesbian versus control
passages (both Es < 1, p = n.s.).

In general, consistent with the inﬂuence of the lesbian passages on readers’ beliefs
about lesbians, the most prejudiced cognitively busy readers who closely attended to the
details of the lesbian passages subsequently expressed more positive attitudes about
lesbians, as compared to the control group. Due to rather inexplicable shifts in the non-
busy control group, the determination of whether non-busy readers were inﬂuenced by
reading the lesbian passages, over and beyond the effect of reading unrelated, control

passages, is difficult to make.

82

Perceived Plausibility. In the present research it was hypothesized that the least
versus most prejudiced readers would consider the positively toned lesbian passages to be
more plausible. Furthermore, it was predicted that participants’ perceptions of the
plausibility of the lesbian narrative passages would be related to their preexisting prejudice
toward lesbians, and more speciﬁcally, that the perceived plausibility of the narrative
passages would mediate the relationship between participants’ preexisting prejudice
toward lesbians and their subsequently reported beliefs about lesbians. Due to this
relationship between preexisting prejudice and plausibility, it was expected that in a
pattern similar to how readers’ preexisting attitudes about lesbians moderated the
passages’ inﬂuence, the perceived plausibility of the passages also was expected to alter
the passages’ inﬂuence.

To begin examining these hypotheses, participants’ perceptions of the plausibility
of the lesbian narrative passages are examined ﬁrst. Since only participants who actually
read the lesbian passages assessed their plausibility, the orthogonal contrasts included in
the preceding analyses were not utilized when investigating perceived plausibility. Thus,
the plausibility ratings of the lesbian passages were analyzed as a ﬁrnction of the source of
the narrative passages (ﬁction or nonﬁction), cognitive busyness (absent or present),
participants’ prejudice toward lesbians, and, ﬁnally, the variability in judgments created by
participants’ preexisting prejudice toward lesbians (curvilinear component of prejudice).

Consistent with what had been hypothesized, there was a signiﬁcant relationship
between participants’ preexisting prejudice toward lesbians and their perceptions of the
plausibility of the lesbian passages (ﬂ = -.32), E(1, 138) = 15.41, p < .001. More

speciﬁcally, more prejudiced participants perceived the positively toned lesbian passages

83

to be less plausible than did less prejudiced participants. In addition, consistent with the
pattern when the passages for all three target groups were examined, participants were
somewhat more likely to perceive the nonﬁctional lesbian passages as more plausible (M =
5.70) than the ﬁctional lesbian passages (M = 5.49), E(1, 138) = 3.33, p < .08. However,
these effects were modiﬁed by a marginally signiﬁcant source X cognitive busyness X
prejudice toward lesbian interaction, E(1, 124) = 3.02, p < .09 (See Figure 10). Simple
eﬁ‘ect tests revealed that cognitive busyness eliminated the signiﬁcant tendency of more
prejudiced participants to perceive the positively toned lesbian passages as less plausible
(not cognitively busy: 1: = -.38, E(1, 124) = 14.34, p < .001; cognitively busy: I: = -.18,
E(1, 124) = 2.47, p > .10).7 Although not signiﬁcant by conventional standards,
inspection of the pattern of results suggests that the relationship between participants’
prejudice and their plausibility judgments was particularly reduced when participants read
the ﬁctional passages when cognitively busy (h = ~11) versus not cogrnitively busy (I: = -
.43). The variation based on cognitive busyness for the nonﬁctional passages was not
nearly so pronounced (cognitive busyness h = -.25; no cognitive busyness h = -.33). Once

again, these results suggest that fully attending to the information contained in the lesbian

 

’The perceived plausibility of the lesbian passages was also found to depend on the
interaction between the particular version of the lesbian passages that participants had read
and the variability of participants’ plausibility judgments based on their prejudice toward
lesbians, E( 1, 124) = 4.42, p < .05. Simple effect tests found that more prejudiced
participants perceived both version 1 and version 2 of the lesbian passages to be less
plausible than less prejudiced participants (version 1: h = -.25, E(1,124) = 5.82, p < .05;
version 2: h = -.30, E(1, 124) = 8.28, p < .01) while there was a tendency for variability in
participants’ plausibility perceptions based on their attitudes for only version 2, E(1, 124)
= 3.62, p < .10. However, when dividing participants into groups who were least,
moderately, and most prejudiced towards lesbians, none of these groups signiﬁcantly
differentiated between the perceived plausibility of version 1 and version 2 of the lesbian
passages, (all Es < 1, p = n.s.).

84

passages (i.e., cognitive busyness) caused readers to rely less on their preexisting prejudice

toward lesbians when they made subsequent judgments related to the lesbian passages.

Perceived Plausibility of Lesbian Passages
by cognitive busyness, source, and prejudice toward lesbians

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not Cognitively Busy Cognitively Busy
7 7
55 " 6.5 ~
i ’ i i
6 - g 6 ~
1 ' r *
5.5 '- E 5.5 ”\
5 - 5 -
4.5 - 4.5 ~
4 1 1 g 1 1 4 L l 1 1 1
0.7 3.1 5.5 0.7 3.1 5.5
Prejullce'nrward Lesbians (+/- 1.5 SD) Prejudice Toward Lsslians (+I- 1.5 SD)
Fiction Nonﬁction Fiction Nonﬁction

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 10 - Perceived Plausibility of Lesbian Passages

As the next step in investigating the role of perceived plausibility, participants’
beliefs about lesbians after reading the lesbian passages were examined to see if the
perceived plausibility of the lesbian passages altered the passages’ inﬂuence in a manner
similar to how participants’ preexisting prejudice had. More speciﬁcally, the consistency

of participants’ beliefs with the lesbian narrative passages was examined as a function of

85

the perceived plausibility of the lesbian narrative passages, replication, source of the
passages, and whether participants were cognitively busy or not. As expected, the more
plausible the participants perceived the lesbian passages to be, the more consistent their
beliefs were with the lesbian narrative passages (ﬂ = .42), E(1, 143) = 29.60, p < .001.
However, no indication was found that participants’ perceptions of the plausibility of the
lesbian narrative passages altered the passages’ inﬂuence on participants’ beliefs about
lesbians. More speciﬁcally, the cognitive busyness X prejudice toward lesbian interaction
was not replicated when the perceived plausibility of the lesbian passages was examined in
place of prejudice toward lesbians, E(1, 136) < l, p = n.s.

A related hypothesis regarding perceived plausibility was that participants’
perceptions of the perceived plausibility of the lesbian passages would mediate the
relationship between participants’ preexisting attitudes about lesbians and their
subsequently reported beliefs about lesbians. More speciﬁcally, it was hypothesized that
when conﬁ'onted with positive portrayals of a social group that is generally stigmatized in
the United States (i.e., lesbians), the most prejudiced individuals would have less faith in
the perceived plausibility of the passage as compared to the least prejudiced individuals.
In turn, if participants had less faith in the perceived plausibility of the narrative passage, it
was expected that reading that narrative passage would have less impact on their beliefs
about the depicted social group. As a ﬁrst step in examining these predictions, it was
established that there was a relationship between participants’ prejudice toward lesbians
and their judgments of the perceived plausibility of the lesbian passages (ﬂ = -.32). In
addition, regression analyses showed that both prejudice toward lesbians and the perceived

plausibility of the lesbian passages were related to participants’ subsequently reported

86
beliefs about lesbians (prejudice: ﬁ = -.69; plausibility: ﬂ = .42). Examining the
contribution of participants’ prejudice toward lesbians and the perceived plausibility of the
lesbian passages in a single regression equation provided only very slight support that the
perceived plausibility of the lesbian passages mediated the relationship between
participants’ preexisting prejudice toward lesbians and the beliefs they subsequently
reported. When controlling for perceived plausibility, the [1 between participants’
prejudice toward lesbians and their belief consistency with the lesbian passages was only
attenuated slightly from -.69 to a still signiﬁcant [1 of -.62, E(1, 138) = 102.07, p < .001.
In addition, when controlling for the effect of participants’ prejudice toward lesbians,
perceived plausibility still had a direct independent relationship with participants’
subsequently reported beliefs about lesbians (ﬂ = .22), E(1, 138) = 12.86, p < .001. Thus,
it appears that both the perceived plausibility of the lesbian passages and readers’
preexisting prejudice toward lesbians have independent relationships with their
subsequently reported beliefs about lesbians.

Overall, the pattern of results suggests that perceived plausibility had very little to
do with the inﬂuence of narrative passages featuring a lesbian protagonist. First, the
readers did not rely on the plausibility of the lesbian passages when they reported their
post-exposure beliefs about lesbians. Second, the perceived plausibility of the lesbian
passages did not mediate the relationship between readers’ preexisting prejudice and their
subsequently reported beliefs about lesbians.

Summary. In general, it appears that readers of the lesbian passages were not
affected by whether the passages were ﬁctional or nonﬁctional. However, memorizing the

details of the lesbian passages appeared to make the most prejudiced readers express

87

beliefs more consistent with the positively toned passages, as compared to both non-busy
readers and as compared to the control group. In fact, memorizing the details of the
lesbian passages even caused the most prejudiced participants to express more favorable
attitudes about lesbians, as compared to the control group. Lastly, no indication was
found that the perceived plausibility of the lesbian passages altered their inﬂuence nor did
perceived plausibility mediate the relationslnip between participants’ preexisting prejudice
toward lesbians and their subsequently reported beliefs about lesbians. The plausibility of
the lesbian passages and the readers’ preexisting prejudice toward lesbians had
independent relationships with readers’ subsequently reported beliefs about lesbians.
DISCUSSION

Using available theory and evidence, the present research hypothesized that when
individuals with ﬁrll cognitive capacity read written passages about various social groups,
the passages would be more inﬂuential on the readers’ beliefs about the depicted social
groups if the passages were represented to be nonﬁctional versus ﬁctional. Contrary to
. what was hypothesized, a greater effect of nonﬁctional versus ﬁctional written passages
was not found for non-busy readers of passages featuring either a French Canadian or
lesbian protagonist. In fact, in a pattern exactly opposite to what was predicted, both
cognitively busy and non-busy participants responded somewhat more to the French
Canadian passages when they were represented to be ﬁctional versus nonﬁctional.
Although it is tempting to explain the lack of ﬁndings for the ﬁctional/nonﬁctional
distinction due to participants’ inability to correctly remember having read ﬁctional
passages, in actuality readers only had signiﬁcant problems remembering the ﬁctional

nature of the target passages when they were cognitively busy memorizing the details of

88

the French Canadian passages. Moreover, participants must have, at least on some level,
distinguished between the sources of the passages since they indicated that the nonﬁctional
passages were more plausible than the ﬁctional passages. In addition, follow-up analyses
examining only participants who correctly recalled the source of the passages that they had
read still failed to demonstrate that participants’ beliefs were more affected by nonﬁctional
than ﬁctional narrative passages (see Footnotes 2 & 5).

Although there obviously is no one answer as to why participants were not
differentially aﬁ‘ected by the ﬁctional and nonﬁctional passages, some tentative conjectures
can be offered. Although the tendency was not always signiﬁcant, participants were more
likely to misattribute the source of the ﬁctional passages as “nonﬁctional (true-life
account)” rather than nnisattribute the source of the nonﬁctional passages as “ﬁctional
(made-up account)” This occurred despite extensive pretesting of the narrative passages
that was undertaken to ensure that the passages could be credibly presented as both
ﬁctional and nonﬁctional. Although participants’ misattributions could have been
perpetuated by the passages being rather short (one single-spaced page) and seemingly
rather factually-based, the present research is not alone in ﬁnding that participants have a
tendency to misattribute ﬁctional passages as nonﬁctional. Despite using a passage that
was approximately nine double-spaced pages in length, Brock and Green (1995,
September) also found that participants were more likely to misattribute ﬁctional stories as
true than misattribute nonﬁctional stories as not true.

A second potential conjecture for why individuals did not differentiate between the
ﬁctional and nonﬁctional passages was that even though the ﬁctional passages were

represented as made-up, participants could still have perceived that the presented

89

information contained elements of reality. In fact, the introduction to the ﬁctional
passages could have given participants this idea since the instructions said “...The stories
were made up by various creative writers in order to portray their view of peOple’s life
experiences...” Also, simply by the fact that the passages had ostensibly been printed in
an anthology entitled WW could have given
them more credibility even though participants were explicitly told that “resemblance to
real persons and places is of course coincidental.” Support for this explanation of the lack
of effect for the ﬁctional/nonﬁctional distinction comes from the fact that the perceived
plausibility of both the ﬁctional and nonﬁctional passages were on the plausible side of the
response scale.

A third, yet related explanation for why readers did not differentiate between the
ﬁctional and nonﬁctional source of the narrative information has to do with
“transportedness.” Gerrig (1993) suggests that readers routinely become absorbed, or
transported into the narrative worlds of which they read, almost regardless of the quality
of the narrative. Moreover, once readers become “transported” into a narrative world
they must exert special effort to prevent ﬁctional information from affecting their real-
world beliefs (see also Brock & Green, 1995, September). In fact, although they were
referring to computers, television, and new media, Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass (1996)
argue in their recently published book that individuals often equate mediated life and real
life. According to these researchers “the automatic response is to accept what seems to be
real as in fact real” (p. 8). Moreover, this acceptance will occur almost automatically
since “absent a signiﬁcant warning that we’ve been fooled, our old brains hold sway and

we accept media as real people and places” (p. 12). Further support for the idea that

90

readers regularly get absorbed into narrative worlds is found in research showing that
readers display greater acceptance of false assertions embedded in ﬁctional passages when
both the setting and readers’ personality characteristics lessen the likelihood that they will
ﬁrlly attend to, or scrutinize, the presented information (Wheeler, Brock, & Green, 1997,
May).

A second prediction of the present research was that when participants lacked the
cognitive capacity to take a second, more effortful step to reject or exclude initially
accepted information, they would be less capable of rejecting ﬁctional information or
excluding it from their representations. Thus, it had been expected that the consistency of
participants’ beliefs with the passages that they read would not differ based on the
ﬁctional/nonﬁctional source of the information when participants were cognitively busy,
but would differ when not cognitively busy. Since non-cognitively busy participants did
not signiﬁcantly diﬂ‘erentiate between the ﬁctional and nonﬁctional nature of the passages
in the present research, this prediction was not supported.

The current research offers somewhat mixed support for the prediction that
readers of passages featuring members of various social groups would express beliefs
more consistent with the content of these passages than would readers of unrelated
passages. More speciﬁcally, compared to the readers of the unrelated, control passages,
readers’ beliefs about French Canadians were inﬂuenced by the French Canadian passages
in all cases except when they read nonﬁctional passages with full cognitive capacity. As
this condition was the only instance in which participants’ preexisting attitudes about
French Canadians were related to their subsequently reported beliefs, it is likely that

something about the combination of not paying particular attention to the passages and

91

their nonﬁctional status caused readers to discount the information contained in these
French Canadian passages. Therefore, when these readers were later asked about their
beliefs about French Canadians they appeared to rely more on their preexisting attitudes
about French Canadians than on the content of the French Canadian passages. Although
tentative at best, there are a few potential explanations for why non-busy readers of the
nonﬁctional French Canadian passages ignored the passage information. First, it could
have had something to do with participants’ poor recall of the source of the passages since
the effect of source disappeared when only participants who correctly recalled the source
of the passage that they had read were exannined. Second, it could be that when
participants were not asked to attend careﬁrlly to the French Canadian passages, they
simply ignored the passage because they did not accept such subjectively improbable
information as being genuinely nonﬁctional. In fact, although not signiﬁcant or even a
trend by conventional standards, examination of participants’ assessments of the French
Canadian passages as a function of source and cognitive busyness suggests that the
perceived quality and interest value of the French Canadian passages was lowest for non-
busy readers of the nonﬁctional passages (M = 3.37), as compared to cognitively busy
nonﬁctional readers (M = 3.75) and as compared to non-busy ﬁctional readers (M = 3.56).
Overall, despite the rather odd reaction of non-busy readers of the nonﬁctional French
Canadian passages, it seems that simply reading a passage about a social group for which
the readers do not have preexisting attitudes can affect readers’ beliefs about that group.
Therefore, simply reading about a member of a social group that is rather unfamiliar to the
readers can cause readers to incorporate the information they glean from the passages into

their current representations of that social group, at least temporarily.

92

Interpretation of whether reading lesbian narrative passages had an effect on
readers’ beliefs about lesbians over and above the effect of reading about unrelated social
groups is greatly complicated by the shifts that were found in the supposed “control”
group who had read unrelated passages about French Canadians and rural Americans. As
compared to the other control groups, non-busy readers of the ﬁctional French Canadian
and rural American passages relied less on their preexisting attitudes about lesbians when
they subsequently reported their beliefs about lesbians. More speciﬁcally, when the least
and moderately prejudiced non-busy participants read ﬁctional versus nonﬁctional
unrelated, control passages, they subsequently expressed signiﬁcantly more negative
beliefs about lesbians. Although the pattern for the readers of the French Canadian and
rural American passages did not differ by conventional standards, visual inspection
suggested that the shift in the non-busy ﬁctional control group was mostly due to the rural
American passages since the relationship between participants’ preexisting attitudes about
lesbians and subsequently reported beliefs was stronger for readers of the French Canadian
versus rural American passages (hs = -.85 versus -.59). Since non-busy readers’ general
attitudes about lesbians were also affected by reading the rural American control passages,
it is reasonable to assume that some carry-over or contrast effect may have occurred.
Simply reading the rural American passages may have primed more traditional, small-town
values for the readers which subsequently caused the least and moderately prejudiced
readers to express more negative beliefs and attitudes about lesbians than they normally
would. Unfortunately, although this explanation appears to have merit, the question of
why there were differential effects of ﬁctional and nonﬁctional rural American passages on

the beliefs about lesbians of the least and moderately prejudiced readers remains

93
unanswered.

Despite the shifts in the supposed “control” group, it appears that reading the
positively toned passages about lesbians affected the beliefs about lesbians of only the
most prejudiced participants who had memorized the details of the passages. More
speciﬁcally, the most prejudiced cognitively busy readers of the lesbian passages expressed
more favorable beliefs about lesbians as compared to the most prejudiced non-busy
readers and as compared to the most prejudiced readers who memorized the details of
unrelated passages. Overall, this ﬁnding offers hope that when forced to read and
careﬁrlly attend to positive information about social groups that are generally stignatized,
such as lesbians, the most prejudiced readers may, in turn, express more positive beliefs
about the depicted social group. Further support for this argument can be gained from the
fact that as compared to the most prejudiced non-busy readers of the lesbian passages, the
most prejudiced readers who had been cognitively busy memorizing the details of the
lesbian passages expressed more favorable assessments of the quality and interest of the
lesbian passages (see Appendix F). Although it is encouraging that the positively toned
passages had an inﬂuence on the most prejudiced participants, it appears that when readers
have preexisting attitudes about social groups that are generally stigmatized (such as
lesbians), reading or memorizing the details of a positively toned passage about that group
may not sway the beliefs of less prejudiced readers.

Of interest in the present research was to determine whether simply reading about
a French Canadian or lesbian individual translated to changes in participants’ general
attitudes about these social groups. Overall, there was support for the idea that readers’

attitudes about social goups are susceptible to simply reading about members of those

94

social goups. For instance, it was found that readers of the French Canadian passages
subsequently reported more favorable attitudes about French Canadians than did readers
of unrelated passages. Although this ﬁnding is inconsistent with the fact that the valence
of the cultural focus information contained in the French Canadian passages was negative,
in general, the French Canadian passages were positive in their tone since less prejudiced
readers gave more favorable general assessments of the passages than did more prejudiced
readers (see Appendix F). Similar to the pattern found when exarrnirning readers’ beliefs
about lesbians, memorizing details of the positively toned lesbian passages versus
unrelated, control passages caused only the most prejudiced readers to report more
favorable attitudes about lesbians. Again, it appears that simply forcing high prejudiced
readers to read positively toned passages may have caused them to rethink their negative
attitudes about lesbians.

The last general prediction of the present research suggested that readers would be
most affected by the information contained in narrative passages that they considered to be
more versus less plausible. Contrary to this prediction, it appears that readers were
generally not more affected by passages that they considered to be more plausible.
Although, readers of the lesbian passages did report beliefs that were more consistent with
the passages that they perceived to be more plausible, there was no indication that readers
were more aﬂected by passages that they considered to be more versus less plausible. In
additiorn, it was only when readers paid close attention to the content of the nonﬁctional
French Canadian passages that they appeared to utilize their perceptions of the plausibility
of the French Canadian passages when subsequently making their belief judgments about

French Canadians. Although this ﬁnding is rather hard to explain, it could be that readers

9S

relied more on the plausibility of the passages when they had to pay particular attention to
unfanniliar information that was reported to be nonﬁctional. Participants who were led to
believe the passages were nonﬁctional but who found the content of the passages to be
rather implausible may have responded more based on how plausible the passages
appeared to be than on the actual content of the passages.

A hypothesis in the present research that focused on the lesbian narrative passages
suggested that, similar to the way in which prejudice toward lesbians moderated the
inﬂuence of the passages, perceived plausibility would also alter the inﬂuence of written
passages featuring a lesbian protagonist. Contrary to this prediction, it appears that the
relationship between the perceived plausibility of the lesbian passages and readers’
subsequently reported beliefs about lesbians is quite different from the relationship
between readers’ preexisting prejudice toward lesbians and their subsequently reported
beliefs about lesbians. For instance, unlike the inﬂuence of readers’ prejudice on their
subsequently reported beliefs about lesbians, the inﬂuence of readers’ perceptions of the
plausibility of the lesbian passages was not qualiﬁed by whether readers had been
cognitively busy memorizing the details of the lesbian passages or not.

The prediction that the perceived plausibility of the lesbian narrative passages
would mediate the relationship of participants’ preexisting prejudice toward lesbians and
their subsequently reported beliefs about lesbians only received limited support.
Generally, it is evident that readers’ beliefs about lesbians are independently related to
both their preexisting prejudice toward lesbians and their perceptions of the plausibility of
the lesbian passages. Thus, at least for social groups for which readers have a priori

attitudes, the plausibility of the passages featuring a member of that group has an

96
independent relationship with readers’ beliefs about the depicted social goup. As was
predicted ﬁom the idea that participants’ attitudes about French Canadians would not be
strongly held, no support was found for the idea that the perceived plausibility of the
French Canadian passages mediated the relationship between readers’ attitudes about
French Canadians and their subsequently reported beliefs about French Canadians.

An understandable but unpredicted ﬁnding of the present research was that, as
compared to non-busy readers, cognitively busy readers who had memorized the details of
the narrative passages relied less on their preexisting attitudes about the depicted social
group when they subsequently made related belief judgments. More speciﬁcally, as
compared to their non-busy counterparts, both cognitively busy readers of the lesbian
passages as well as the nonﬁctional French Canadian passages relied less on their
preexisting attitudes about the depicted social group when they made their belief
judgnents. It may be that participants were simply learning the information as they
attempt to memorize it. Therefore, when cognitively busy readers were subsequently
asked to make belief judgnents related to the information contained in the passage that
they had memorized, they tend to rely more on the newly-learned information than on
their preexisting attitudes about the depicted social group. This reasoning is consistent
with research that suggests that individuals have better recall of information when an on-
line versus memory-based judgment task is used (e. g., Hastie & Park, 1986; McConnell,
Sherman, & Hamilton, 1994). It is also consistent with the fact that individuals are more
susceptible to changes in their conception of an action when they concentrate on the
details of the act (e.g., Vallacher & Wegner, 1985; Wegner, Vallacher, Macomber, Wood,

& Arps, 1984).

97
Summary of Findings

In general it appears that pe0ple do not naturally differentiate information on the
basis of its ﬁctional versus nonﬁctional status. Although the present research may be
criticized for not producing the absolute best quality exemplars of ﬁction and nonﬁction, it
is not alone in ﬁnding that readers do not differentiate between ﬁction and nonﬁction
much of the time (e.g., Brock & Green, 1995, September; M. D. Slater, 1988/ 1989,
1990)

Based on the failure to obtain differences between readers’ responses to ﬁctional
and nonﬁctional information, many of the hypotheses of the present research were not
supported. However, it does appear that simply reading about social groups for which
readers do not have clear a priori attitudes (i.e., French Canadians) caused readers to
express beliefs more consistent with the content of the narrative passages, and even to
express more favorable attitudes about the depicted social group. In addition, it was
found that memorizing the details of positively toned passages featuring social group
members for which readers have clearly deﬁned a priori attitudes (i.e., lesbians) caused the
most prejudiced readers to express beliefs more consistent with the passages, and even
expressed more favorable attitudes about the depicted social goup.

Although, on the whole, the hypotheses regarding the role of plausibility in the
differing effects of ﬁctional and nonﬁctional narrative passages were not supported, there
was some slight indication that the perceived plausibility of narrative passages plays a role
in their inﬂuence. Although this was not true for passages about social goups toward
which readers held a priori attitudes (i.e., lesbians), readers of passages featuring

unfamiliar social groups (i.e., French Canadians) at times relied on the plausibility of the

98

passages when they subsequently made related judgnents. More speciﬁcally, readers
appeared to rely on their plausibility judgnents when they reported their beliefs about
French Canadians after closely attending to nonﬁctional passages about French Canadians.
Lastly, the present research suggests that the perceived plausibility of narrative passages
and readers’ preexisting attitudes have independent relationships with readers’
subsequently reported beliefs when the passages feature social group members about
which the readers have preexisting attitudes, but not when the passages feature social
groups for which the readers have weak preexisting attitudes.
Implications

The main implication of the present work is that readers may not differentiate
between ﬁctional and nonﬁctional sources of information in their day-to-day lives.
Although it would seem obvious to academics that there is a signiﬁcant difference between
the accuracy of ﬁctional and nonﬁctional information, it does not appear that this
perception is universally shared. Because of the failure of readers to differentiate between
ﬁctional and nonﬁctional sources of information about social groups, this makes one
wonder about how and from what sources people are acquiring information about social
groups. Based on the present research, it is not outside the realm of possibilities that
readers are as likely to acquire information about social groups lfi'om the Natignalﬁnqujm
as they are from the W. Although it is unlikely that readers’ beliefs about a
social goup for which they have already formed attitudes will be dramatically inﬂuenced
by reading a single narrative passage about that social group, it is conceivable that readers’
beliefs about a rather unfamiliar social group can be inﬂuenced by ﬁctional depictions of

that group. Consistent with when optimal learning from the mass media occurs (see Atkin

99

& Greenberg, 1980), readers may rely more on the information they gain from ﬁctional
sources when they lack real-world experience with the depicted social group. To repeat a
quotation reported earlier, “absent a signiﬁcant warning that we’ve been fooled, our old
brains hold sway and we accept media as real people and places” (Reeves & Nass, 1996,
p. 12).
Limitations and Future Research

Like much of the research regarding the ﬁctional/nonﬁctional distinction of written
narratives (e.g., Brock & Green, 1995, September; M. D. Slater, 1988/ 1989, 1990), the
present research found that readers do not regularly differentiate between ﬁctional and
nonﬁctional information presented in narrative passages. However, in the present research
it is not entirely clear that the passages utilized were the best possible exemplars of
ﬁctional and nonﬁctional passages that individuals confront in their daily lives. In
particular, it is questionable whether the ﬁctional passages were as good exemplars of
ﬁction as the nonﬁctional passages were of nonﬁction especially since readers had
relatively greater trouble accurately recalling the source of the ﬁctional passages. In
addition, the passages created to test the predictions about groups for which participants
did not have ﬁrmly held attitudes (i.e., French Canadian) were perceived to be of poorer
quality and less plausible than the passages about social groups for which readers had
preexisting attitudes (i.e., lesbians). Therefore, this research probably did not provide as
good a test for the predictions about social groups for which readers did not have
preexisting attitudes as it did for social goups for which readers had preexisting attitudes.

Related to the quality of the written passages used in the present research was the

manipulation of the ﬁction/nonﬁction distinction. The present research could have failed

100

to ﬁnd any distinctions between ﬁction and nonﬁction because people may have a
tendency to treat all written material and, in particular, material that has been published, to
be at least based in reality. Consider that quite a number of ﬁctional books, such as Qf
MimndMen and W have been banned from United States schools.
Although these books are portraying “made up” people, these books must be deemed
representative enough of what can happen in real life to merit banning them (T. C. Brock,
personal communication, February 14, 1997).

Due to the fact that readers may not automatically differentiate between ﬁctional
and nonﬁctional sources of information on a day-to-day basis, a good question to address
in ﬁrture research is under what conditions readers actually do make the distinction
between ﬁction and nonﬁction. The ﬁrst step in addressing this question would be to both
create more credible exemplars of ﬁction and nonﬁction and to increase the salience of the
ﬁction/nonﬁction manipulation. The narrative passages would probably be more credible
as ﬁctional passages if they were longer, more engaging, and contained more lyrical
transitions in the text. Rather than trying to start with autobiographical essays and making
them more ﬁctional, as was done in the present research, the narratives might have more
of a ﬁctional feel to them if originally ﬁctional passages were edited to create narrative
passages that could be credibly presented as both ﬁctional and nonﬁctional. In the present
research, it is very likely that beginning the process of creating the narrative passages from
originally nonﬁctional passages could have “anchored” the tone of the passages as
nonﬁctional.

To make sure that readers distinguish between ostensibly nonﬁctional and ﬁctional

passages, the distinctions between the two sources could be made much more salient. For

101

instance, readers could be told that the ﬁctional passages came from a novel commonly
found in convenience stores whereas the nonﬁctional passages came from the NM]:
Times. In addition, the format of the printed materials could be changed so that they are
consistent with their ostensible source. Furthermore, when presenting the passages to the
participants the researcher in each session could hold up their supposed source Mk
Times or paperback novel). This action would probably increase the salience of the
ﬁctional/nonﬁctional distinction of the passages by providing participants with a visual,
salient cue as to the type of passage they would be reading.

Alternatively, the instructions given to participants could be changed so that the
ﬁctional passage may be seen as less representative of the real world. Participants could
be told that the writers of the passages had been randomly assigned to write the passages
for their writing class. For the ﬁctional passages, participants could be told that the
authors had no prior knowledge of the topic on which they wrote and, in fact, had been
uncomfortable writing the passages because of their lack of familiarity with the depicted
social group. However, for the nonﬁctional passages, the participants could be told that
the authors were given time to extensively research the social goup depicted so that the
presented information was true-life rather than simply made-up.

A different problem with the current research was the rather inexplicable
interactions that involved the inﬂuence of the “control” passages on participants’ beliefs
and attitudes about lesbians. Because of these rather strange interactions it was diﬂicult to
determine if the narrative passages featuring lesbian protagonists actually had an effect on
readers’ beliefs over and above the effect of reading unrelated, control passages. One way

to deal with the problem of carry-over or contrast effects in ﬁrture research would be to

102

have the control group read passages about a location or event that were not focused on a
person or social goup in any way. In addition, this control goup would not be subjected
to the experimental manipulations of source or cognitive busyness and thus, the poterntial
for inexplicable interactions involving these experimental manipulations would be
removed. A second control group could also be used that simply read the target passages
and responded to the related belief items without being subjected to any of the
experimental manipulations. This control group would provide a baseline against which
the effects of the experimental manipulations could be compared.

Another limitation of the present research was that, unexpectedly, the participants
were not particularly negative about lesbians, a group that is generally stigmatized in the
United States. Thus, despite the fact that more prejudiced participants expressed beliefs
that were less consistent with the positively toned lesbian passages than did less prejudiced
participants, it is still not clear that the passages were, in fact, contrary to the preexisting
attitudes and beliefs of the most prejudiced participants.

Although there are several limitations in the present research, the research has
sparked a host of questions about when and for what reasons readers may or may not
differentiate between ﬁctional and nonﬁctional sources of information. More speciﬁcally,
the next step in trying to understand how readers are affected by narrative descriptions of
social goups would be to determine at what point readers start to differentiate between
ﬁctional and nonﬁctional sources of information. One way to do this would be to provide
readers with more extreme examples of ﬁction and nonﬁction. For instance, it would be
of interest to determine whether pe0ple actually do absorb information about social goup

members from Manning articles that they read as they wait in line at the grocery

103

store, as compared to articles from the Wes. If the less than credible nature
of the W is not a strong enough warning for readers to discount the
information that they read, this has serious implications for how people regularly form
their beliefs about social goups. A different question that could also be addressed in
future research would be to determine the “type” of pe0ple who would be more likely to
utilize the ﬁctional/nonﬁctional distinction of narrative passages. Although past research
suggests that the majority of readers do not differentiate between the sources of narrative
passages, it is likely that high need for cognition readers and readers for whom the
accuracy of subsequent related judgments is important will differentiate between ﬁctional
and nonﬁctional sources of information. Evidence showing that certain types of people
regularly differentiate between ﬁction and nonﬁction will shed insight into whether most
readers fail to differentiate between ﬁction and nonﬁction because of motivational issues
or simply because they perceive a ﬁctional world to be representative of the real world.
Once it has been established that people can or will differentiate between ﬁctional
and nonﬁctional sources of information, the next step will be to determine by what
cognitive processes people do so. Following the paradigm of the present research, it is
likely that when readers do not have cognitive capacity they will be more likely to simply
accept all information that they read, regardless of its source. Lastly, another question
that could be asked in future research is how readers are affected by written information
that does not fall neatly into the ﬁctional/nonﬁctional dichotomy. For instance, many
readers recognize that historical novels, although ostensibly ﬁctional, often contain
descriptions of events, settings, and people that are very much based on real life. It would

be of interest to see whether readers actually perceive these types of reality-based ﬁction

104

to be more nonﬁctional than ﬁctional, and, if so, how these perceptions will inﬂuence how
readers are affected by the information contained in these materials.

Other, less concrete questions that have been sparked by the present research are
as follows: When readers do differentiate between ﬁction and nonﬁction, do they do so
because they use the source information as a credibility cue or because the perceived
quality of the presented information is inherently different because of its
ﬁctional/nonﬁctional status? Is nonﬁctional information seen as more “real” than ﬁctional
information? Do readers even differentiate between ﬁction and nonﬁction when they
happen to glance through a magazine in a doctor’s office? By addressing these questions
researchers can gain a better understanding of how people’s beliefs and attitudes are
affected by what they read.

Conclusions

Despite this and other research, it still remains a relatively unanswered question
whether readers differentiate between information about social goups contained in
ﬁctional and nonﬁctional narrative passages. This research again underscores the difﬁculty
of creating situations in which media users discriminate between ﬁctional and nonﬁctional
information. In combination with other research, it appears that the question that should
be asked is under what conditions readers actually differentiate between ﬁction and
nonﬁctiorn, rather than the question asked in this research of when readers will not

differentiate between the ﬁctional/nonﬁctional nature of narrative passages.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX A

PREEXISTING ATTITUDE SCALES
AttitudLScales

The response to each item was assessed using a 7-point Likert-type scale with “1”
signifying “disagree strongly” and “7” signifying “agree strongly.” Items with an asterisk
were reverse scored so that a higher score indicates more prejudice toward the target
group.

Attitudes toward French Canadians

French Canadians are unlikeable people.

It is easy to understand why peOple like French Canadians"
I generally admire French Canadians.*

French Canadians are very ﬁiendly, outgoing, nice peOple.*
French Canadians are very demanding and pushy.

P'PPNE"

Attitudes Toward Lesbians - Short Form (ATL-S; Herek, 1988)

l. Lesbians just can’t ﬁt into our society.

2. State laws regulating private, consenting lesbian behavior should be loosened.*

3 Female homosexuality is a sin.

4 Female homosexuality in itself is no problem, but what society makes of it can be a

problem.‘
5. Lesbians are sick.
Exalrrarinnlhermnmercr (Haddock et 31-, 1993)

Participants were asked to “circle a number between 0° and 1000 to indicate your
overall evaluation of typical members of a target group.” The extreme ends of the scale,
0° and 100°, were labeled “extremely unfavorable” and “extremely favorable,”
respectively, with the adjectives “very,” “quite,” “fairly,” and “slightly” unfavorable or
favorable marked at 10° increments. The midpoint of the scale 50°, was labeled “neither
favorable nor unfavorable.”

EillaLtaracLsmrrns
French Canadian Latinos/Hispanics
Lesbians Small town USA resident

Irish

Gay Men

105

APPENDIX B

APPENDIX B

SOCIAL GROUP BELIEF SCALES

The response to each item was assessed using a 7-point Likert-type scale with “1”
signifying “disagree strongly” and “7” signifying “agree strongly.” Items with a number
sign (#) are attitude measures that were not directly addressed within the passage. Items
with an asterisk were reverse scored so that a higher score indicates either beliefs
consistent with the narrative passages or more positive attitudes about the social goups.

Emchﬁanadians

1. French Canadians are very focused on their own culture.

2. Most French Canadians would prefer to become more like English Canadians.‘

3. The Catholic church is currently a major part of French Canadians’ daily life.‘

4. French Canadians by tradition are very religious.

5. French Canadians have a hard time relating to non-French Canadians.

6. Due to their cultural identity, French Canadians will inevitably have conﬂict with
English Canadians.

7. I admire French Canadians.#

8. The French Canadian culture provides a great beneﬁt to the rest of Canada.#

106

107

Lesbians

1. The love and commitment of two lesbians in a long-term romantic relationship can
be very strong and deep.

2. The love a lesbian feels for her partner is not true love.‘

3. There are no good reasons why lesbians should have to hide their relationships in
public.

4. It is socially awkward when lesbians reveal their sexual orientation.‘

5. Lesbians only have themselves to blame if they are harassed.*

6. Harassment of homosexuals is greatly exaggerated and probably doesn’t occur that
often.‘

7. Lesbians are generally unpleasant people.#"'

8. It would be beneﬁcial to society to accept the homosexuality of lesbians as

normal.#

APPENDIX C

APPENDK C

STIMULUS NARRATIVE PASSAGES
E II: l. I: . I

My French Canadian Side
machine]

On the day her daughter started kindergarten, Marie settled back at the kitchen
table with a cup of coffee and reﬂected back on her life with her biological family as well
as her life with the family she had created with her husband. When Marie ﬁrst married she
had sincerely believed that she did not want children, but the time came, not too many
years later, when she and her husband realized that they really longed to have a family.
Much to Marie’s joy and amazement they ﬁrst had David, then two years later, Monique
had entered her life with a loud squall. Although the children were a wonderful addition
to Marie’s life, their entrance into the world intensiﬁed the cultural differences that Marie
and her husband had to conﬁ'ont within their marriage. For Marie it was very strange to
see how two different upbringings got in the way when both she and her husband tried to
look after, and transmit customs to, their children. The squabbles the couple had
pertaining to their different backgrounds-John being ﬁrst generation western Canadian of
Anglo-Danish roots versus Marie’s background as a French Canadian from Quebec-~were
colorful and, in retrospect, quite amusing.

As Marie settled back more comfortably in her chair, she realized that the conﬂicts
that she and John had had in their married life may be at least on some level, inevitable
because of their cultural differences. Like many others, Marie was raised in a completely
French environment where the two linguistic groups, French and English, were completely
separated. In fact, as Marie tried to think back to her childhood she could not recall there
being even one Anglo anywhere in her neighborhood or even in her section of the city.
While Marie took another sip of coffee, she was struck, as she had been many times in the
past, on how much inﬂuence her French Canadian upbringing had on her current behaviors
and outlooks.

Probably due to her French Canadian upbringing, Marie exhibited an enormous
amount of pride in her French heritage. She spent tremendous amounts of time and effort
trying to get Quebec, or the French factor, more widely accepted and respected in the rest
of Canada. At times she was more successful than others but, all-in-all Marie’s efforts
generally failed to generate acceptance of the French Canadian culture in all of Canada.
However, on one front of this battle she had been extremely successful. She somehow
managed to instill her children with an appreciation and love for their French heritage. To
achieve this goal, Marie like many other French Canadians used many tactics. She made
sure that early in their lives both of her children were part of play groups composed
entirely of children of French Canadian descent while she also exposed both David and
Monique to a vast quantity of French literature, music, and cinema. In fact, even when

108

109

they were teenagers Marie would insist that her children sing songs from French folklore
with her as they travel in the car. Thankfully for Marie her efforts had paid off-both of
her children adored anything and everything that was an expression of their French
Canadian heritage.

One of the things that went to the wayside in David and Monique’s lives that had
been a major part of their mother’s life was the inﬂuence of the Catholic Church. For
Marie, the Church ruled her daily life as a child; she would have had to have been
nonhuman to have escaped its pervasive inﬂuence. However, this was not true for David
and Monique as the French Canadian culture had become more secular. The major
religious infrastructures that once controlled everyone’s waking hours had generally fallen
apart like a house of cards. Where once the Catholic rituals, ceremonies, obligations, and
code of conduct reined supreme in the lives of French Canadians, the Church’s force was
largely nonexistent in the day-to-day lives of Marie’s children.

As Marie watched her daughter Monique leave for her ﬁrst day of school, it hit her
that her child was slowly absorbing her French Canadian heritage. Although this same
French identity had created some conﬂict in her marriage, Marie was proud to say that her
children considered themselves French Canadian and, even more importantly, were proud
of that heritage.

110
E IE I. I! . 2

My French Canadian Side
mama

As Monique sat back with her cup of coffee and reﬂected on her long career as a
radio journalist, she clearly recalled the dinner that was thrown in her honor on the eve of
her ten-year anniversary as a radio journalist. Although she had thought that it would be
great to see old ﬁiends and colleagues at the dinner and although she did have a good
time, she also remembered how surprised she was that her radio program had been on the
air for ten long years. It had seemed as if it had only been yesterday that she had started
the program in an attempt to produce and transmit an accurate portrayal of the French
Canadian culture. Monique smiled to herself as she recalled how earnest and sincere she
had been about communicating openly and honestly about the beauty and power of French
Canadian culture to all of Canada.

During Monique’s reﬂections about her career she noted that even though she may
not have ever managed to make English Canadians’ attitudes about French Canadians
more positive, she had certainly become wiser than when she ﬁrst began. For instance, a
continual source of frustration was that she was convinced that both the country and
Quebec would be better off if English Canadians paid attention to the greatness of the
French Canadian culture. With a shake of her head, Monique realized that although she
had found these grand goals for the program somewhat frustrated by reality, had she not
been driven by a need to promote the French Canadian heritage, she might never have
found her way onto the airwaves.

When Monique thought back to the start of her career she realized that her drive
to promote and invigorate the greatness of the French Canadian culture was most likely
related to her family upbringing. In her house, generations of French Canadians had their
space and place and all of them were determined to get the French fact more widely
accepted and respected in the rest of Canada. In fact, as Monique thought about her
family she realized she was simply walking in their footsteps since most of them had been
driven to ensure that the French Canadian culture remained a vital aspect of life in Canada.

Interestingly Monique realized that it was only later in her life that she ﬁnally
discovered the extent to which she had absorbed the French fact into her identity. One
instance that clearly stood out in her mind was how easily conﬂict had erupted between
she and her husband even though they shared similar values and outlooks. Looking back,
Monique attributed their conﬂict largely to basic cultural differences. Although both she
and John were Canadians, the differences that emerged from him being English Canadian
and she being French Canadian had been immense and, only now in hindsight, had just set
them up for conﬂict. It was as if they were born and raised in different countries rather
than in a single country.

Another facet of her life in which her French Canadian identity had made a huge
diﬂ‘erence, Monique noted as she looked back at her life, was her choice in programming
for her radio show. For instance, Monique easily recalled how she consciously avoided
the topic of religion on her radio program. When Monique grew up, the Catholic Church
was the central part of life. Her family’s life had revolved around the Church and activities

11]

sponsored by the Church. However, in more recent years, the hold the Church had over
French Canadians had completely fallen away. While 40 years, Monique realized, that it
would have been accurate to highlight the power of the French Canadian culture, it would
have been very inaccurate for Monique to paint the Church as currently anything but
peripheral to the lives of most French Canadians.

Conversely, the issue that Monique recalled regularly highlighting in her program
was the beauty and wonder of French artistic expression. Probably due to her heritage,
Monique realized that she must have been almost inevitably drawn to French artistic
expression be it art, music, dance, or even movies. Unlike other art, Monique
remembered relating to French expression in a way that cannot be replicated with non-
French art. Fortunately one of the joys of Monique’s job was that she could transmit and
promote the beauty of French artistic expression to the rest of Canada through the
airwaves.

As Monique looked back at her career, she felt as if all the pieces of her life had
somehow added up to the career she ended pursuing. It was as if her career choice were
determined at an early age. In essence, she saw her pursuit of a career as a radio journalist
as a natural step in her lifelong attempt to communicate and highlight her French Canadian
heritage to all of Canada.

112

A Wedding in Carmel
[Mamas]

As Linda settled back into her chair, she thought back to the morning of her
wedding with her partner Susan. She thought about how the two of them had woken up
early and had looked at each other with glee. Even now, Linda smiled to herselfas she
thought about how nervous she had been that morning and how comical she felt as she
and Susan had tried to appear nonchalant as they waltzed through their hotel lobby with a
two-tiered wedding cake and a bottle of champagne. She also remembered how lucky
they felt that the hotel owner hadn’t been around when they arrived, because they thought
he might have kicked them out if he had known they were lesbians. Linda remembered
clearly how, at the time, she and Susan had jokingly complained that they hadn’t received
their complimentary champagne from the hotel for their wedding.

Linda remembered how she and Susan had spent what seemed like hours looking
for the perfect place to have their wedding on the beach. They ﬁnally found a secluded,
beautiful section of jade trees that was exactly the setting Linda had hoped they would
ﬁnd. Even now, Linda clearly remembered the great excitement of her wedding day and
how she had felt intense closeness and love for her partner. What a moment it had been
when she and Susan had strolled over to the trees they had chosen for their special
wedding spot and exchanged their vows of love and devotion. Especially memorable was
that they had ended the ceremony by reading each other their own poetry that had been
written especially for each other and the occasion. Their writings had told of their inner
feelings about why they had chosen each otheruwhy they wanted to be married and why
they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. Linda reﬂected how nervous,
excited, bubbly, and happy she had been at the end of the ceremony. In fact she had cried
as well as laughed at the end of the ceremony because she felt so exhilarated and so in
love. It had seemed that for the ﬁrst time in her life, she truly felt love as she had never
before felt it.

As she reﬂected back on her life with Susan, Linda felt that marriage to the woman
she had chosen was the most beautiﬁrl and amazing thing that had ever happened to her.
Although the marriage of two women was not legal, Linda considered herself married to
Susan in every sense of the word.

Unfortunately, as Linda looked back at her marriage, she thought back to the
troubles that she and Susan had faced when they had been affectionate in public. Since
both women liked to be touched and touch each other, they had been affectionate in public
at the beginning of their relationship. However, because of this affection Linda clearly
remembered some very hostile and scary situations that resulted. One incident stood out
sharply in her memory. She and Susan had just ﬁnished their picnic lunch in the park and
were holding hands while they settled back to gaze up at the clouds high above their
heads. Out of nowhere, a group of six teenagers appeared and threw taunts at them such
as “dykes” and “lez” and “freaks.” The whole situation had been very unreal, as well as
extremely hurtful and upsetting, especially because Linda and Susan had done nothing to
the teenagers and were just minding their own business.

113

As Linda looked back at this incident she was wistful about how nice it would
have been to lead a life free from harassment. She tended to think that these incidents
were so hurtful simply because they were not uncommon. For instance, another time
Linda remembered vividly was when a truck full of men had tried to run she and Susan oﬁ‘
the freeway when the men saw them being affectionate.

Linda grimaced to herself when she thought about how long the anger and hurt of
these incidents had lingered in her life. Even though she realized the injustice of the
situational constraints, she avoided showing her affection for another women in public due
to the potential for harassment. Instead, she had looked for times and situations where it
had been accepted for her to be open about her love for Susan, for example, with ﬁiends.

As Linda contemplated her life she realized that her ﬁiends were just that much
more special because, with them, she and Susan had been able to be open about their love.
The great warmth and love she had always experienced when she interacted with both her
straight and gay friends who were supportive of her love for Susan was hard for her to
describe.

114

An Anniversary in California

Ihaakjiﬂel

As Denise settled into her chair and reﬂected back on her life with her partner
Carol, one of the most memorable days of their relationship was the day that they had
celebrated their 10th anniversary. Although lesbian couples are generally not recognized
by religion, the law, or the society section of the local newspaper, Denise remembered
clearly how she and Carol had ﬁnally decided that they really wanted to throw a huge,
extravagant, anniversary party in order to celebrate the love they had for each other.
Looking back, Denise was amazed by how much time and effort they had put forth so that
they could celebrate their anniversary with the literally hundreds of gay and straight friends
who had touched and inﬂuenced their lives over the years. In fact, every time she thought
back to the day of their anniversary celebration, Denise found herself grinning as she
remembered how worried she and Carol had been about the possibility that all of their
guests might arrive at the same time-~which would have been disastrous.

Generally, whenever Denise contemplated her relationship with Carol she always
felt a sense of contentment and satisfaction develop within herself. In fact, as she looked
back through their years together she was continually amazed by how rewarding and
fulﬁlling their relationship had been. With a start Denise realized that she viewed herself
and Carol as basically married. She saw Carol as her true, life-long partner and loved her
with her very heart and soul. In fact, Denise thought that she and Carol made their 10th
anniversary such a big deal just so they could communicate the full extent of their love and
joy to their ﬁiends and family.

As she looked back at her anniversary, Denise also realized that the event was a
means for her to bring together many of the people who had provided her with a real sense
of “belonging.” As a lesbian, Denise remembered many instances when she felt as if she
was an outsider; the one who must conform in order to glide easily through the largely
heterosexual world. In particular, Denise found herself becoming wistﬁrl when she
realized that she and Carol cannot safely hold hands or hug in public. These displays of
affection, which were common for a man and woman, were largely forbidden for two
women. Denise remembered all too vividly some of the unpleasant situations that had
resulted from violating this unspoken “rule” against public displays of affection between
two women. Once a group of teenagers came out of nowhere and surrounded she and
Carol when they were walking hand-in-hand in the park. Another time they were literally
kicked out of a restaurant because they were simply holding hands. As she reﬂected back
on these two incidents, Denise found herself becoming especially frustrated with these
situations because she and Carol were not doing anything that would not have been
acceptable had they been a man and a woman. Simply the fact that they were two women
versus a man and a woman was justiﬁcation enough for the harassment.

When Denise thought about her anniversary party, she realized that the party had
been one of the few times that she had felt none of the pangs of living as an outsider.
Even some time later, she realized that the great joy she felt as she greeted old friends and
new was difficult for her to express. She remembered literally glowing when some of her

115

longtime lesbian friends openly chatted with a judge or a commissioner, when a lesbian
couple of 20 years mingled with heterosexual couples, when gay and straight persons of
all arenas of life acknowledged each other socially, and when a state senator and his wife
expressed gratitude for their ﬁiendship. As she thought back to the anniversary party,
Denise clearly remembered how proud she was to host such a gathering where lesbians
could be open about their love for other women. At their anniversary party as they
celebrated their love, Denise realized that she probably felt for the ﬁrst time in her life that
she that she was no longer the outsider!

116
B I! . ll'l

Growing Up in Rural Iowa

manner

As Lynn thought back to her childhood she realized that she was an Iowan through
and through. She had grown up in a small town in Iowa where her father was a farmer.
As Lynn reﬂected back on her father, she realized that one of her most vivid memories of
him was sitting in the local coffee shop chatting with the other farmers about the status of
the corn and soybean ﬁelds that surrounded the town. Another topic that stood out
sharply in Lynn’s memory was how much time the local farmers spent discussing the
weather. Looking back, Lynn smiled as she remembered that it had always seemed as if
every conversation inevitably turned to a discussion of the weather-«whether it would rain
or be sunny in the upcoming weeks.

Looking back at her life, Lynn laughed at herself when she thought about how
determined she was as a teenager to leave rural Iowa. She found her early determination
especially amusing because, when she graduated from college, she immediately married
her childhood sweetheart and moved to a rural Iowan community that was not very far
from her own hometown. Before she accepted Steve’s marriage proposal, Lynn
remembered that she brieﬂy considered her earlier desire to leave rural Iowa but this desire
paled in comparison to her desire to marry Steve. Actually there was no question that
Lynn and Steve would return to rural Iowa because Steve was determined to be a farmer
and rural Iowa was where he had access to available farm land.

One of Lynn’s most vivid memories of her new home was her arrival after she and
Steve had married. Coon Rapids only had a population of twelve hundred so the way into
town was by way of a small two-lane country road. As they drove into town Lynn
remembered sinking back into the car seat and wondering to herself what she had done by
coming into this tiny town. In fact, she could still vividly recall the horrible feeling of
being trapped that she had at the time and her thought that she would never get out of the
town again. Thankfully, Lynn acknowledged that her fears had slowly faded over the
years as her children and her work in the local community had helped her develop ties to
the community.

With a shake of her head Lynn was still amazed by how isolated Coon Rapids was.
For instance, there was no public transportation such as a bus or train in or out of Coon
Rapids so the only way to leave town was by car. In fact Lynn remembered clearly that
the closest trafﬁc light to Coon Rapids was more than twenty-ﬁve miles away as was the
nearest movie theater, clothing shop, and even fast food restaurant. Because of the
isolation, Lynn clearly recalled how she and her family frequently ended of up driving
more than an hour to go to the city to shop and to simply get away from the monotony of
Coon Rapids. Also because of the isolation, Lynn remembered what a big deal it was
when a teenager turned sixteen. Lynn clearly remembered the day that she had turned
sixteen and had gotten the magical drivers’ license. All of a sudden she had been able to
race freely to the movies or even to the roller skating rink without being attached to the
conﬁning apron strings of her parents. For both Lynn and her friends it was only when
they turned sixteen that they had experienced the freedom and liberation to explore the

117

world on their own.

Although places like Coon Rapids may not be the most exciting place, as Lynn
looked back she felt that her small town was a wonderful place to live. Since it was so
small, she could clearly picture most of the faces of the people in town. In fact, one thing
that still amazed Lynn was her ability to walk down the street and be able to say hello, by
name, to all the people she had met on the street. Even as she thought back to this aspect
of small town life, Lynn could still feel the sense of comfort that this ﬁiendliness had
always brought her. Lynn recalled that her own kids were known by most of the people in
the town and that she had always thought that had there ever been an emergency the
townspeople would have instantly helped out. In fact, Lynn wistﬁrlly thought about when
there had been emergencies how people had really pulled together. Once when a family
lost their son unexpectedly in an accident, the neighboring farmers had almost by magic
joined forces and harvested the grieving family’s crops. Another instance that stood out
strongly in Lynn’s memory was when a tornado almost completely destroyed a family’s
home. Almost instantly, dozens of people joined together to clean up the farmstead. It
was incidents like those, Lynn thought to herself, that make small rural communities
special.

118
B I! . 1:.2

Growing Up in Rural Wyoming
[backside]

When Mike was a kid, he was an authentic Wyoming cowboy. With a smile he
noted that his more current life in the city was a far cry from that of his childhood in rural
Wyoming. Now when Mike met new people he always had the sense that they felt that he
was kidding when he told them that he used to be a full-ﬂedged roping cowboy.

As he looked back at his life in Wyoming, one of Mike’s earliest memories was
going out to help work cattle in the pasture with his older brother. When he was quite
small, he remembered clearly that his job was to watch the gate so that not one of the
cows escaped to freedom as his brother drove the cattle into the corral. With a shake,
Mike realized that one of the ﬁnest moments of his life occurred when he was about ﬁve
or six when he and his horse stopped a cow determined to escape to the open pasture.
Even now the details of the event were still extremely vivid. For some minutes Mike and
the cow stood eyeing each other as they countered each other’s moves. The cow would
jump one way and Mike and his horse would cut her off. Then she would jump another
way, and again they would cut her off. Although Mike remembered this sequence must
have taken at least half an hour, more realistically he was sure that the “famous standoff’
couldn’t have lasted more than a minute, at most. Mike recalled that his victory over the
cow had been even sweeter because he had received a raise on the spot for his valor.
Mike was then making a huge sum of ten whole cents per hour. Even now Mike can
dredge up the feeling of how proud he was at that moment.

Looking back Mike realized that life in a rural community had its own unique set
of rules. In the spring Mike remembered being regularly excused from school to help his
father plant the ﬁelds while in the fall he again was excused in order to help with harvest.
As he looked back in his memory at those times Mike was still amazed by how hard his
parents had worked. Mike remembered that his dad would be in the ﬁeld during planting
and harvesting time for hours on end. He only recalled that his dad stopped working to
sleep a few hours and to eat the food the family brought him in the ﬁeld.

Surprisingly from his current perspective, Mike also noted that the work pattern of
his family was not at all unusual. The rhythm of his hometown town was totally
dependent on the ﬁelds that surrounded the town as well on the livestock that could be
seen by the hundreds peaceﬁrlly munching away in the grassy ﬁelds. This meant in the
spring everyone focused on planting the wide expanse of ﬁelds, the summer everyone
worked their cattle and prayed for rain, while in the fall harvest was in ﬁrll throttle.
Looking back Mike remembered how big a topic rain was in the conversations at the local
coffee shop. During dry years everyone anxiously scanned the sky in hopes of seeing an
emerging rain cloud while in the wet years everyone anxiously scrutinized the sky for a
break in the constant rain and drizzle. In fact, Mike realized that the ﬁrst thing his parents
had done every single morning was to turn on the radio so that they could hear the latest
verdict about the weather and also hear the crop report each hour indicating the prices that
were currently being offered for the cattle and crops that were the livelihood of Mike’s
family

119

With a grimace, Mike recalled all too vividly how life changed almost overnight
during the farm depression of the 1980s. Seemly overnight, interest rates went shooting
up and his neighbors and ﬁ'iends were going broke leﬁ and right. Even now, Mike felt the
frustration hit him as he remembered that his friends, who always assumed that they would
join the family farming operation with their parents, were sent for a tailspin as this was no
longer an option. While just two years previously a lot of Mike’s friends were all ready to
join their family’s farming operation, suddenly these operations were no longer ﬁnancially
strong enough to provide a living for more than one person. In fact, Mike remembered all
to clearly that many of these operations couldn’t even support the parents of Mike’s
ﬁiends since they were going broke at an alarming rate. Almost with a guilty feeling,
Mike acknowledged that since he had been one of few people in his hometown who was
on the college-path, he also was one of the few whose career path was not drastically
altered by the farm depression. Even now, Mike was amazed by how life could change in
just a few short years.

APPENDIX D

APPENDIX D

PERCEIVED PLAUSIBILITY SCALE

Elliott et al. (1983, August) identiﬁed 12 items that measured the perceived

plausibility of television. A total of six items judged to be most relevant to written
passages about members of social groups were selected for use. These items were
modiﬁed so that they measure the perceived plausibility of written passages rather than
television and measure the perceived plausibility and realism of how members of a
particular social group act. The response to each item was assessed using a 7-point
Likert-type scale with “1” signifying “disagree strongly” and “7” signifying “agree
strongly.” Items with an asterisk were reverse scored so that a higher score indicates
more perceived plausibility.

l.

The way people in their social group really live their everyday lives is not
portrayed very accurately in this passage.*

Events that actually have happened or could happen are discussed in this passage.

The individuals in this passage appear to be typical of members of their social
group.

The person in this passage is not reﬂective of the typical person in his or her social
group.‘

I have a hard time believing the individuals in this passage are real because the
basic situation is so far-fetched.*

This passage deals with the kind of situations and choices that people in their
social group have to deal with in their day-to-day life.

120

APPENDIX E

APPENDIX E

NARRATIVE RATINGS
The response to each item was assessed using a 7-point bipolar scale.
How interesting did you ﬁnd the passage you just read to be?
VERY INTERESTING -- NOT VERY INTERESTING
How well written was the passage you just read?
VERY WELL WRITTEN -- NOT VERY WELL WRITTEN
How enjoyable was it to read this passage?
VERY ENJOYABLE -- NOT VERY ENJOYABLE
How would you rate the length of the piece you just read?
TOO SHORT -- TOO LONG

How likely would you be to read this passage if you came across it in a magazine
you often read?

VERY LIKELY -- NOT VERY LIKELY

121

APPENDIX F

APPENDIX F

AUXILIARY FINDINGS

Clil 'EIC l'Il I

A secondary hypothesis of the present research addressed whether participants’
conﬁdence in the judgments they make about French Canadians would be affected by
reading narrative passages featuring a French Canadian protagonist. To examine this issue
participants’ conﬁdence in the judgments they made about French Canadians was
examined as a function of the French Canadian versus control contrast, the French
Canadian residual contrast, replication nested within target group, source of the narrative
passages, cognitive busyness, and participants’ attitudes about French Canadians (both
linear and curvilinear effects). Participants’ conﬁdence in the beliefs and attitudes they
reported about French Canadians was not surprisingly greater when they had read the
French Canadian passages (M = 4.14) versus the unrelated, control passages (M = 2.90),
E(1, 419) = 40.61, p < .001. Although there was some indication that participants’
conﬁdence in the judgments they made about French Canadians differed based on which
control passage they had read (M = 3.11 for rural American passages and M = 2.68 for
lesbian passages; E(1, 419) = 3.49, p < .10), participants’ conﬁdence in their French
Canadian judgments was greater when they had read the French Canadian passages versus
either of the control passages (both as < .001). In addition, being cognitively busy
memorizing the details of either the French Canadian or unrelated, control passages
caused participants to be somewhat more conﬁdent in their judgments about French
Canadians than were non-busy participants (Ms = 3.82 versus 3.42), E(1, 419) = 3.81, p <
.06. However, these effects were modiﬁed by a four-way signiﬁcant interaction that
included the variability in participants’ conﬁdence based on their preexisting levels of
prejudice toward French Canadians (curvilinear effect of attitudes), E(1, 391) = 4.46, p <
.05.'

Examination of the conﬁdence of participants who had read the French Canadian
passages revealed that cognitively busy participants who had memorized the details of the
passages were somewhat more conﬁdent in their French Canadian judgments than non-
busy participants who had simply read the passages (Ms = 4.41 versus 3.83), E(1, 319) =
3.47, p < .10 (see Figure 11). However, this effect varied depending on how prejudiced

 

'When the conﬁdence of only participants who had correctly recalled the source of
the passage that they had read was examined, a marginally signiﬁcant interaction was
found between the French Canadian versus control contrast, source of the narrative
passages, whether participants were cognitively busy or not, and the curvilinear
component of participants’ attitudes about French Canadians, E(1, 286) = 3.08, p < .09.
However, when only examining the conﬁdence of participants who had read the French
Canadian passages, none of these effects were signiﬁcant (p > .10).

122

123

the participants were toward French Canadians, E(1, 391) = 5.65, p < .05. When
participants were not cognitively busy, their conﬁdence in their French Canadian
judgments varied somewhat depending on whether they were least, moderately, or most
prejudiced toward French Canadians (E(1, 391) = 3.48, p < .10), while the conﬁdence of ‘
cognitively busy participants was not dependent on their preexisting prejudice levels, E(1,
391) = 2.22, p > .15. However, when the conﬁdence of the least, moderately, and most
prejudiced participants were examined separately, cognitively busy versus non-busy
participants were not more conﬁdent in their French Canadian judgments for any of the
three groups, (all us > .15).

Conﬁdence in E'ench Canadian Judgments
French Canadian Passages
by cognitive busyness and prejudice toward French Canadians (curvilinear)

 

 

 

 

6
5 i-
W
, '\
0.5...
o.
3 .-
2 1 1 I 1
1.9 3.3 4.7

Prejudice Toward Freud: Canadians (+/- 1.5 SD)

 

NGCOsBUSy CosBUSY

 

 

 

Figure 11 - Confidence in French Canadian Judgments (French Canadian Passages)

When comparing how conﬁdent participants were with their French Canadian
judgments based on whether they had read the French Canadians passages versus the
unrelated, control passages, care must be taken because of marginally signiﬁcant
differences found in participants’ conﬁdence based on which of the control passages they
had read (lesbian or rural American), whether they had been cognitively busy or not, and

124

based on the variability in their conﬁdence ratings across levels of prejudice (curvilinear
effect of attitudes), E(1, 391) = 3.82, p < .06. Simple effect tests revealed that
participants’ level of preexisting prejudice toward French Canadians only created mild
variations in their conﬁdence about their French Canadian judgments when they had read
the rural American control passages (E(1, 319) = 2.81, p < .10), but created signiﬁcant
variability in their conﬁdence when they had read the lesbian control passages, E(1, 319) =
4.16, p < .05. Although not signiﬁcant by conventional standards, it appears that the
marginally signiﬁcant four-way interaction involving the control group occurred largely
because there was less variability in participants’ conﬁdence across prejudice level when
non-busy participants had simply read the rural American passages versus when they had
been cognitively busy memorizing the details of these passages, while the variability in the
conﬁdence of the readers of the lesbian passages was fairly consistent for both the
cognitively busy and non-busy participants.

When comparisons were made to see if reading the French Canadian passages had
an effect over and beyond the effect of reading unrelated, control passages on participants’
conﬁdence with their French Canadian judgments, consistent with the pattern for all
participants, both cognitively non-busy and busy readers of the French Canadian passages
displayed more conﬁdence in their judgments about French Canadians than did the readers
of the unrelated passages (cognitively non-busy: Ms = 3.83 versus 2.77, E(1, 391) =
14.40, p < .001; cognitively busy: Ms = 4.41 versus 3.02, E(1, 391) = 27.14, p < .001; see
Figure 12). Unfortunately, due to the fact that the non-busy readers of the rural control
passages were somewhat unique because they appeared to make their conﬁdence
judgments independently of their preexisting attitudes about French Canadians, the
comparison between non-busy readers of the French Canadian and control passages is
rather hard to interpret. However, for sack of completeness, it appears that when
participants were not cognitively busy their greater conﬁdence in their French Canadian
judgments after reading the French Canadian versus control passages did not vary as a
function of their preexisting prejudice toward French Canadians E(1, 391) = 1.67, p > .15.
Regardless of whether they had read the French Canadian or control passages, the
conﬁdence of non-busy participants varied somewhat depending on whether they were
least, moderately, or most prejudiced toward French Canadians, E(1, 319) = 3.38, p < .10.
For cognitively busy participants who had memorized the details of the passages, their
greater conﬁdence after reading the French Canadian passages was modiﬁed by their
preexisting level of prejudice toward French Canadians, E(1, 391) = 7.49, p < .01. The
effect of memorizing the details of the French Canadian versus control passages was
greatest for the least prejudiced participants (Ms = 4.72 versus 3.08, E(1, 319) = 15.07, p
< .001) and moderately prejudiced participants (Ms = 4.30 versus 2.79, E(1, 319) = 8.74,
n < .01), and least, but still signiﬁcant, for the most prejudiced participants (Ms = 4.15
versus 3.13), E(1, 319) = 4.94, p < .05.

125

Conﬁdence in French Canadian Judgments
by cognitive busyness, French Canadian vs. control contrast, and
prejudice toward French Canadians (curvilinear)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not Cognitively Busy Cosrﬁtively Busy
6 6
5 - 5 *
g 4 _\/ g 4 _‘—_\

+ .
_ 3 .r

3 ~..\"s VIZ/f

2 L I L I I 2 1 1 1 l l
1.9 33 4.7 1'9 33 4-7

Prejudice Toward rm Canadims (+/. 1.5 SD) 9‘1““ “mm M 0.1:.de 1-5 SD)

 

 

Fr. Canadian Control F" Canadian Cmtrol

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 12 - Conﬁdence in French Canadian Judgments

Overall, although there were differences based on how prejudiced the participants
were toward French Canadians, it appears that cognitively busy participants who
memorized the details of the French Canadian passages were somewhat more conﬁdent in
their French Canadian judgments than non-busy readers who had simply read the French
Canadian passages. In addition, as compared to reading unrelated, control passages,
reading the French Canadian passages caused participants to be more conﬁdent in their
French Canadian judgments. However, this conclusion must be made somewhat
tentatively for the non-busy readers because of a rather inexplicable shift in the non-busy
control group caused primarily by readers of the rural American passages making their
conﬁdence judgments independently of their preexisting prejudice toward French
Canadians.

126
CI“ 'Il°Il I

A secondary hypothesis of the present research addressed whether participants’
conﬁdence in the judgments they make about lesbians would be affected by reading
narrative passages featuring a lesbian protagonist. To examine this issue participants’
conﬁdence in the judgments they made about lesbians was examined as a function of the
lesbian versus control contrast, the lesbian residual contrast, replication nested within
target group, source of the narrative passages, cognitive busyness, and participants’
attitudes about lesbians (both linear and curvilinear effects). As expected, participants
were more conﬁdent in their judgments about lesbians if they had read the lesbian
narrative passages (M = 6.15) versus the unrelated, control passages (M = 5.72), E(1,
419) = 12.49, p < .001. They were also more conﬁdent in their judgments if they were
less versus more prejudiced toward lesbians (h = -.27), E(1, 419) = 21.79, p < .001.
However, these effects were qualiﬁed by several higher-order interactions, the highest
being an interaction between the lesbian versus control contrast, source, and the variability
in participants’ conﬁdence based on their preexisting levels of prejudice toward lesbians
(curvilinear effect of attitudes), E(1, 391) = 5.36, p < .05 (see Figure 13).”

 

’When examining conﬁdence in lesbian judgments for only participants who had
correctly recalled the source of the passage that they had read, the lesbian versus control
contrast X source X curvilinear component of prejudice toward lesbians interaction was
largely unaffected. In addition, a marginally signiﬁcant higher-order interaction was found
that included cognitive busyness (lesbian versus control contrast X source X cognitive
busyness X curvilinear component of prejudice toward lesbians), E(1, 286) = 3.02, p <
.09.

127

Confidence in Lesbian Judgments
by source, lesbian vs. control contrast, and
prejudice toward lesbians (curvilinear)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fictional Passages Nonﬁctional Passages
7
6 —
5 l f.
, 5.x”...-
4 - 4
3 1 1 1 1 1 3 J 1 l l l
0.7 3.1 5.5 0.7 3.1 5.5
Prejudice Toward Lesbian (+/. 1.5 SD) Put-judo. Toward Indians (+1. 1.5 SD)

 

 

Lesbian Control Lesbian Control

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 13 - Conﬁdence in Lesbian Judgments

When examining the conﬁdence of only participants who had read the lesbian
narrative passages, less prejudiced individuals were more conﬁdent in their judgments
about lesbians than were more prejudiced individuals (12 = -.25), E( 1, 391) = 6.86, p < .05.
However, the source of the lesbian narrative passages did not have a differential effect on
participants’ conﬁdence (E(1, 391) < 1, p = n.s.), nor did the effect of source vary
depending on how prejudiced participants were toward lesbians, E( 1, 391) = 2.44, p > .10.
These results suggest that the readers of the unrelated, control passages differentiated
between the source of the passages while the readers of the related, lesbian passages did
not.

Interpretation of the effects of the lesbian versus unrelated, control passages on
participants’ conﬁdence in their lesbian judgments must be done cautiously because of a
marginally signiﬁcant interaction found between which of the control passages participants
had read, the source of the passages, and the variability in participants’ conﬁdence based
on their preexisting levels of prejudice toward lesbians (curvilinear effect of attitudes),

F( 1, 367) = 2.93, p < .10. Simple effect tests found that participants’ conﬁdence across

128

the least, moderately, and most prejudiced participants varied more when they had read
the French Canadian nonﬁctional control passages versus the rural American nonﬁctional
control passages (E(1, 391) = 4.52, p < .05), while there were no differences in the
variability of participants’ conﬁdence based on whether they had read either of the
ostensibly ﬁctional control passages, E(1, 391) < 1, p = n.s. Further examination revealed
that despite the greater variability in participants’ conﬁdence based on reading the
nonﬁctional French Canadian control passages, the least, moderately, and most prejudiced
participants were not less conﬁdent in their lesbian judgments when they read the French
Canadian versus rural American nonﬁctional control passages (all as > .15).

When comparing the conﬁdence participants expressed for their lesbian judgments
based on whether they had read the lesbian versus control passages, it was found that
participants were more conﬁdent in their judgments when they had read a ﬁctional lesbian
passage as compared to a ﬁctional control passage (Ms = 6.12 versus 5.72), E(1, 391) =
5.27, p < .05 (see Figure 13). Although participants were generally more conﬁdent in
their lesbian judgments when they were less versus more prejudiced (h = -.29, F(1, 391) =
14.14, p < .001), their conﬁdence did not increase consistently across the most,
moderately, and least prejudiced participants (curvilinear effect of prejudice), F(1, 391) =
13.93, p < .001. However, for participants who had read nonﬁctional passages, the
greater conﬁdence they gained from reading the lesbian versus control passages (E(1, 391)
= 8.38, p < .01) and being less versus more prejudiced (h = -.25, F(1, 391) = 10.48, p <
.01) was qualiﬁed by whether participants were least, moderately, or most prejudiced
toward lesbians, E(1, 391) = 10.78, p < .001. Based on the shift in the control group it is
likely that this interaction is primarily due to the greater variability in the conﬁdence of
participants who had read the unrelated French Canadian control passages. While the
moderately and most prejudiced participants displayed greater conﬁdence in their lesbian
judgments after reading the lesbian nonﬁctional versus control nonﬁctional passages
(moderately prejudiced: Ms = 6.36 versus 5.39, E(1, 391) = 10.46, p < .001; most
prejudiced: Ms = 5.96 versus 5.32, E( 1, 391) = 6.97, p < .05), this was not true for the
least prejudiced participants (Ms = 6.27 versus 6.41), E(1, 391) < 1, p = n.s.

Overall, it once again appears that most participants were more conﬁdent in the
judgments they made about social groups which they have read about. More speciﬁcally,
with the exception of the least prejudiced readers of the nonﬁctional lesbian passages,
readers of the lesbian versus unrelated, control passages were generally more conﬁdent in
their lesbian judgments. However, the conclusion that the nonﬁctional lesbian passages
had an effect on readers’ beliefs, above and beyond the effect of reading unrelated, control
passages, must be made tentatively due to a rather inexplicable shift in participants’
conﬁdence about their lesbian judgments after reading the ostensibly nonﬁctional French
Canadian control passages.

Assessmentutﬂamtinhssm
To understand how favorably participants perceived the narrative passages, the
composite of their assessments of the narrative passages (i.e., how interesting, enjoyable,

and well-written they found the passages to be, and the likelihood they would freely
choose to read the passages) was examined as a function of the target of the narrative

129

passages, replication nested within target group, source, and cognitive busyness.
Examination of the pattern of responses revealed that participants only signiﬁcantly
differed in their assessments of the narrative passages based on which social group was
featured, E(2, 419) = 19.41, p < .001. Simple effect analyses showed that participants
perceived the lesbian passages (M = 4.43) more favorably than the rural American
passages (M = 3.88, F(1, 419) = 14.53, p < .001) and, in turn, the rural American
passages were perceived more favorably than the French Canadian passages (M = 3.54),
F(1, 419) = 5.49, p < .05.

Follow-up analyses meant to determine if participants’ assessments of the narrative
passages also varied as a function of their preexisting prejudice toward the depicted social
group were done separately for participants who had read the French Canadian and lesbian
passages. When participants’ perceptions of the French Canadian passages were
reanalyzed, this time including participants’ preexisting prejudice toward French
Canadians (both linear and curvilinear effects), it was found that participants who were
more prejudiced toward French Canadians gave less positive assessments of the French
Canadian passages (12 = -.23), E(1, 137) = 5.31, p < .05.’0

 

”Examination of participants’ assessments of the French Canadian passages
revealed two signiﬁcant interactions involving the replication factor. Signiﬁcant variation
was found in participants’ assessments of the French Canadian passages based on which
version of the French Canadian passage they had read, cognitive busyness, and their
preexisting prejudice toward French Canadians, E(1, 123) = 5.03, p < .05. Simple effect
analyses revealed that participants perceived version 1 of the French Canadian passages
more favorably than version 2 when they had been cognitively busy memorized the details
of the passages (Ms = 3.87 versus 3.34, E(1, 123) = 4.24, p < .05), but not when they had
not been cognitively busy (Ms = 3.51 versus 3.42), E(1, 123) = 2.71, p > .10. Although
not signiﬁcant by conventional standards, it appears that when cognitively busy
participants memorized the details of the French Canadian passages, the least prejudiced
participants, as compared to the most prejudiced participants were more favorable toward
version 1 than version 2. However, when not cognitively busy, participants did not appear
to differ in their assessments of the two versions of the French Canadian passages based
on their preexisting prejudice toward French Canadians.

In addition, a replication X source X cognitive busyness interaction was found
that was not evident in the overall analysis across the three target passages, E(1, 123) =
5.37, p < .05. Simple effect analyses showed that when participants were not cognitively
busy, a marginally signiﬁcant interaction was found between the particular version of the
French Canadian passages that the participants had read and the source of the passage,
F(1, 123) = 3.34, p < .10. Although not signiﬁcant by conventional standards, closer
examination revealed a cross-over pattern where non-busy participants perceived version 2
of the ostensibly ﬁctional passages more favorably than version 1 (Ms = 3.76 versus 3.35),
but when the passages were represented to be nonﬁctional the pattern was reversed
(version 2: M = 3.03; version 1: M = 3.66). However, when cognitively busy
participants memorized the details of the French Canadian passages, they tended to
perceive version 1 more favorably then version 2 (Ms = 3.87 versus 3.34, E(1, 123) =

130

When participants’ assessments of the lesbian passages were reanalyzed including
participants’ preexisting prejudice toward lesbians (both linear and curvilinear eﬂ‘ects),
more prejudiced participants judged the lesbian passages less favorably than less
prejudiced participants (12 = -.50), F(1, 138) = 23.86, p < .001. However, this effect was
qualiﬁed by whether participants been cognitively busy or not (F(1, 134) = 9.11, p < .01),
and by a signiﬁcant interaction between cognitive busyness and variability in participants’
assessments across their preexisting levels of prejudice toward lesbians (curvilinear effect
of prejudice), F(1, 131) = 5.60, p < .05 (see Figure 14). Simple effect analyses revealed
that when not cognitively busy, more prejudiced participants were less favorable toward
the lesbian passages than were less prejudiced participants (12 = -.77), E(1, 131) = 35.89, p
< .001. However, when cognitively busy participants had memorized the details of the
lesbian passages, more prejudiced participants did not necessarily have more negative
assessments of the lesbian passages (12 = -.19, F(1, 131) = 1.56, p > .15), although there
was variability in participants’ perceptions of the lesbian passages based on their
preexisting level of prejudice, E(1, 131) = 5.57, p < .05. When assessments of the lesbian
passages were examined for the least, moderately, and most prejudiced participants, only
the most prejudiced individuals had more favorable assessments when they had been
cognitively busy versus non-busy (Ms = 4.11 versus 3.13), E(1, 131) = 8.06, p < .01. For
the least and moderately prejudiced individuals, being cognitively busy or not had no eﬂ‘ect
on their assessments of the lesbian passages (both Es < 1, p = n.s.). Thus, in line with the
fact that the beliefs about lesbians of only the most prejudiced cognitively busy individuals
were affected by reading the lesbian passages, it appears that as compared to the non-busy
participants, being cognitively busy memorizing the details of the lesbian passages also
made the most prejudiced participants perceive the lesbian passages more favorably.

 

3.86, p < .10), regardless ofits source, E(1, 123) = 2.35, p > .10.

131

Assessments of Lesbian Passages
by cognitive busyness and prejudice toward lesbiars (curvilinear)

 

 

 

 

2 I 1 l 1 l

 

0.7 3.1 5.5
Prejudice Toward mum (+1. 15 SD)

 

NotCogBusy CogBusy

 

 

 

Figure 14 - Assessments of Lesbian Passages

APPENDIX G

APPENDIX G

FRENCH CANADIAN BELIEF CONSISTENCY (SINGLE-ITEM MEASURES)

E III l' Ill'

When examining the pattern of participants’ beliefs about the desire of French
Canadians to be dissimilar, or isolated, ﬁom English Canadians, the predicted interaction
involving the French Canadian versus control contrast, source, and cognitive busyness did
not reach signiﬁcance, E( 1, 397) = 1.13, p > .15. Although participants did express beliefs
more consistent with the French Canadian passages when they had read the French
Canadian versus unrelated, control passages (Ms = 5.57 versus 4.92, E(1, 418) = 25.31, p
< .001), this effect was qualiﬁed by whether participants were least, moderately or most
prejudiced toward French Canadians, E(1, 397) = 6.13, p < .05 (see Figure 15).u
Examination of the pattern of participants’ beliefs about French Canadian isolation
suggested that although participants expressed beliefs more consistent with the French
Canadian narrative passages when they had actually read one of the French Canadian
versus unrelated, control passages, the magnitude of the difference was smallest for the
most prejudiced, as compared to the moderately and least prejudiced participants (most
prejudiced: Ms = 5.29 versus 4.84, F(1, 397) = 4.37, p < .05; moderately prejudiced: Ms
= 5.58 versus 5.01, E(1, 397) = 6.29, p < .05; least prejudiced: Ms = 5.78 versus 4.93,
F(1, 397) = 17.74, p < .001).

 

11The pattern of results remained the same when only participants who had
correctly recalled the source of the passages that they had read were examined.

132

133

Belief Consistency with French Canadian Isolation
by French Canadian vs. control contrast and
prejudice toward French Canadians (curvilinear)

 

 

 

 

1.9 3.3 4.7
Prejudice Toward Hutch Canadians (+l- 1.5 SD)

 

Fr. Canadian Control

 

 

 

Figure 15 - Belief Consistency with French Canadian Isolation

Although not part of the main design of the study, when beliefs about French
Canadian isolation were reanalyzed using only participants who had read the French
Canadian passages and excluding the control group, a marginally signiﬁcant interaction
between source and attitudes about French Canadians was found, F(1, 133) = 2.85, p <
.10 (see Figure 16). Closer examination revealed that when participants read ﬁctional
French Canadian passages, the beliefs of more prejudiced participants were less consistent
with the passages than were the beliefs of less prejudiced participants (12 = -.33), E(1, 133)
= 5.79, p < .05. However, when the passages were nonﬁctional, the beliefs of more and
less prejudiced participants did not differ (h = .05), E(1, 133) < l, p = n.s. In fact, it
appears that since the most prejudiced participants discounted the information contained in
the ﬁctional passages, their beliefs tended to be less consistent with the French Canadian
passages when they were ﬁctional versus nonﬁctional (Ms = 5.04 versus 5.67), E(1, 133)
= 2.81, p < .10. This difference between the ﬁctional and nonﬁctional passages was not
found for the least and moderately prejudiced participants (both Es < l, p = n.s.).

134

Belief Consistency with Hench Canadian Isolation
French Canadian Passages
by source and prejudice toward French Canadians

 

 

 

 

3 1 1 1 1 1
1.8 3.2 4.6

Prejudice Toward French Canadians (+/- 1.5 SD)

 

Fiction Nonﬁction

 

 

 

Figure 16 - Belief Consistency with French Canadian Isolation (French Canadian
Passages)

Overall, it appears that, as compared to readers of the unrelated, control passages,
readers of the French Canadian passages subsequently expressed beliefs about French
Canadian isolation that were more consistent with the French Canadian passages.
Although this effect was true for most participants, there was some indication that the
most prejudiced participants, as compared to the moderately and least prejudiced
participants, were not as affected by reading the French Canadian passages. In addition,
an auxiliary analysis suggested that the most prejudiced participants may have rejected the
information contained in the French Canadian passages when they were represented to be
ﬁctional versus nonﬁctional.

P [IICI I'E IE2 l'S'I

Despite the hypothesized effects of ﬁctional versus nonﬁctional French Canadian
passages and cognitive busyness on participants’ beliefs about the power of the church in

135

French Canadian society, the three-way interaction involving the French Canadian versus
control contrast, source, and cognitive busyness was not found to be signiﬁcant, E(1, 398)
< 1, p = n.s. Although reading the French Canadian versus unrelated, control passages did
cause participants to express beliefs more consistent with the French Canadian passage
information about the power of the church (Ms = 4.30 versus 3.90, E(1, 419) = 15.40, p <
.001), this effect was qualiﬁed by two marginally signiﬁcant interactions. In particular, the
highest-order marginally signiﬁcant interaction was between the French Canadian versus
control contrast, cognitive busyness, and the variability of participants’ beliefs based on
their preexisting prejudice toward French Canadians (curvilinear effect of attitude), E(1,
391) = 3.81, p < .06.‘2

In order to understand this complex four-way interaction, the beliefs about the
power of the church in French Canadian society for participants who had read the French
Canadian passages were examined ﬁrst (see Figure 17). When participants had read the
French Canadian passages, their beliefs about the power of the church depended on
whether they had been cognitively busy or not and their preexisting prejudice toward
French Canadians, E(1, 391) = 8.40, p < .01. However, this interaction was further
qualiﬁed by variability in participants’ beliefs based on whether they were least,
moderately, or most prejudiced toward French Canadians (curvilinear effect of attitude),
F(1, 391) = 4.32, p < .05. Although, in general, less prejudiced non-cognitively busy
participants expressed beliefs more consistent with the French Canadian passages than did
more prejudiced non-busy participants (12 = -.37, E(1, 391) = 7.80, p < .01), this tendency
was not uniform across participants who were least, moderately, and most prejudiced, E(1,

 

12When beliefs about the power of the church were inspected for only participants
who had correctly recalled the source of the narrative passage that they had read, two
marginally signiﬁcant interactions were found that included whether the participants had
read a ﬁctional or nonﬁctional passage. The highest-order interaction involving source
included the French Canadian versus control contrast, source, and the variability in
participants’ beliefs based on their preexisting prejudice toward French Canadians
(curvilinear effect of prejudice), E(1, 288) =3.49, p < .07. Closer examination of the
beliefs of only participants who had read the French Canadian passages showed that the
effect of source was modiﬁed somewhat by whether participants were least, moderately,
or most prejudiced toward French Canadians, E(1, 288) = 3.67, p < .10. While
participants’ beliefs did not vary based on their preexisting attitudes when they had read
nonﬁctional passages (E(1, 288) < 1, p = n.s.), they did vary based on whether they were
least, moderately, or most prejudiced when they had read the ﬁctional French Canadian
passages, E(1, 288) = 4.62, p < .05. Further examination showed that the beliefs of the
least prejudiced participants were signiﬁcantly more affected by the nonﬁctional than
ﬁctional passages (Ms = 4.84 versus 3.90) and the beliefs of the most prejudiced
participants were somewhat more affected by the nonﬁctional versus ﬁctional passages
(Ms = 4.44 versus 3.87), E(1, 288) = 10.21, p < .001 and E(1, 288) = 3.24, p < .10,
respectively. The pattern was opposite for the moderately prejudiced participants
(nonﬁctional passages: M = 3.74; ﬁctional passages: M = 4.61), E(1, 288) = 7.03, p <
.01.

136

391) = 3.98, p < .05. However, when participants had been cognitively busy memorizing
the details of the French Canadian passages, their subsequently reported beliefs about the
power of the church were not related to their preexisting prejudice toward French
Canadians, (h = .11), F(1, 391) < 1, p = n.s. Because of the fact that the more versus less
prejudiced readers were more likely to reject the passage information (i.e., not agree with
the belief items) if they were not cognitively busy, the most prejudiced participants
expressed beliefs more consistent with the French Canadian passages when they had been
cognitively busy memorizing the details of these passages versus non-busy, (Ms = 4.48
versus 3.82), E( 1, 391) = 4.79, p < .05. The beliefs of the least and moderately prejudiced
participants did not differ based on whether they had been cognitively busy or not when
they had read the French Canadian passages (both Es < l, p = n.s.).

Belief Consistency with Power of the Church in French Canadian Society
French Canadian Passages
by cognitive busyness and prejudice toward French Canadians (curvilinear)

 

 

 

 

 

1.9 3.3 4.7
Prejudice Toward Fletch Canadians (+/- 1.5 SD)

 

Not Cog. Busy Cog. Buy

 

 

 

Figure 17 - Belief Consistency with Power of the Church in French Canadian
Society (French Canadian Passages)

137

Figure 18 displays participants’ beliefs about the power of the church in French
Canadian society based on whether they had read the French Canadian versus unrelated,
control passages, whether they had been cognitively busy or not, and ﬁnally based on the
variability in their beliefs across their preexisting levels of prejudice toward French
Canadians (curvilinear effect of attitudes). For participants who had not been cognitively
busy, the greater effect of reading the French Canadian versus unrelated, control passages
on their beliefs about the power of the church (Ms = 4.23 versus 3.91, E(1, 391) = 3.94, p
< .05), was qualiﬁed by their preexisting prejudice toward French Canadians, E(1, 391) =
5.04, n < .05. As discussed above, more versus less prejudiced non-busy participants
appeared to reject the information presented in the French Canadian passages about the
power of the church in French Canadian society (I: = -.37). However, the beliefs of non-
busy readers of the unrelated, control passages did not differ based on their preexisting
prejudice toward French Canadians (h = —.06), E(1, 391) < 1, p = n.s. Closer examination
of the pattern of non-busy participants’ beliefs about the power of the church suggested
that, as compared to the control group, only the least prejudiced participants incorporated
the information contained in the French Canadian passages into their subsequently
reported beliefs (French Canadian: M = 4.52; control: M = 4.02), E(1, 391) = 4.38, p <
.05. As compared to the control group, the moderately and most prejudiced non-busy
participants were not inﬂuenced by the information contained in the French Canadian
passages (both us > .15). For cognitively busy participants who had memorized the details
of the French Canadian passages, the greater inﬂuence of the French Canadian versus
control passages on their beliefs about the power of the church in French Canadian society
(M = 4.37 versus 3.89, E(1, 391) = 12.32, p < .001), was not dependent on their
preexisting prejudice toward French Canadians, E(1, 391) < 1, p = n.s.

138

Belief Consistency with Power of the Church in Ranch Canadian Society
by cognitive busyness, French Canadian vs. control contrast, and
prej udice toward French Canadians (curvilinear)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not Cognitively Busy Cognitively Busy
6 6
5 r 5 _
3 r 3 ’
2 1 1 1 1 1 2 l 1 l l 1
1.9 33 4.7 1.9 33 4.7

 

 

Prejudice Toward French Canadians (+/. 1.5 so) ”slum Toward M Cami-m (H- L5 SD)

 

 

Fr. Canadian Control Fr. Canadian Cmtrol

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 18 - Belief Consistency with Power of the Church in French Canadian
Society

In general, the inﬂuence of the French Canadian passages on participants’ beliefs
about the power of the church in French Canadian society depended on how prejudiced
the participants were toward French Canadians. Being cognitively busy memorizing the
details of the French Canadian passages caused only the most prejudiced readers to
express beliefs that were more consistent with the passage information, as compared to
non-busy readers. However, as compared to the readers of the unrelated, control
passages, cognitively busy readers expressed beliefs that were more consistent with the
French Canadian passages regardless of their preexisting prejudice levels, while this was
true only for the least prejudiced non-busy readers.

E II: 1' Bl" 'I

Inconsistent with the hypotheses of the present research, when participants’ beliefs
about the religiosity of French Canadians were examined, the interaction between the
French Canadian versus control contrast, source, and cognitive busyness did not reach

139

signiﬁcance, F(1, 398) < l, p = n.s. Although participants expressed beliefs that were
more consistent with the religiosity information contained in the French Canadian passages
when they had read the French Canadian passages versus the unrelated, control passages
(M = 4.34 versus 4.11, E(1, 419) = 7.59, p < .01), this effect was modiﬁed by whether
participants had been cognitively busy or not and by their attitudes about French
Canadians, E(1, 398) = 6.72, p < .01.‘3

When participants had read the French Canadian passages (see Figure 19), they
displayed beliefs about French Canadian religiosity that were somewhat more consistent
with the content of the French Canadian passages when they had been cognitively busy
memorizing the details of the passages versus not busy (Ms = 4.46 versus 4.21), E(1, 398)
= 3.17, p < .10. However, this effect of cognitive busyness was qualiﬁed by how
prejudiced the participants were toward French Canadians, E(1, 398) = 4.96, p < .05. In
what by now must be a familiar theme, participants’ beliefs after reading the French
Canadian passages were somewhat related to their preexisting prejudice toward French
Canadians when they had not been cognitively busy (12s = -.21, E(1, 398) = 3.57, p < .10),
but the relationship disappeared when participants had been cognitively busy memorizing
the details of the French Canadian passages (12 = .11), F(1, 398) = 1.44, p > .15. Because
more prejudiced readers appeared to reject the information contained in the French
Canadian passages (i.e., not agree with the belief items) when they were not cognitively
busy, moderately prejudiced participants expressed beliefs more consistent with the French
Canadian passage when they were cognitively busy versus not (Ms = 4.75 versus 4.23,
E(1, 398) = 4.16, p < .05), while this same pattern was a trend for the most prejudiced
participants (M = 4.44 for cognitively busy; M = 4.00 for not cognitively busy), E(1, 398)
= 2.99, p < .10. The beliefs of the least prejudiced participants did not differ based on
whether they had been cognitively busy or not (Ms = 4.28 versus 4.33), E(1, 398) < 1, p =
n.s.

 

13When the beliefs of only participants who had corrected recalled the source of
the narrative passage that they had read were examined, the interaction between the
French Canadian versus control contrast and cognitive busyness was not qualiﬁed by
participants’ preexisting attitudes about French Canadians. Moreover, the source of the
narrative passages continued to not inﬂuence participants’ beliefs about the religiosity of
French Canadians.

140

Belief Consistency with French Canadian Religiosity
French Canadian Passages
by cognitive busyness and prejudice toward French Canadians

 

 

 

 

2 1 1 1 1 1
1.9 3.3 4.7

Prejudice Toward Fluids Canadiam (+/- 1.5 SD)

 

No Cog. Busy Cog. Busy

 

 

 

Figure 19 - Belief Consistency with French Canadian Religiosity (French Canadian
Passages)

The determination of whether reading the French Canadian passages had an effect
on participants’ beliefs about the religiosity of French Canadians, over and above the
effect of reading unrelated, control passages, must be made cautiously because of an
unexpected interaction that occurred for the supposed “control” group (see Figure 20).
When examining the control group, a signiﬁcant interaction between cognitive busyness
and preexisting attitudes about French Canadians demonstrated that participants’ beliefs
about the religiosity of French Canadians can be affected by reading passages unrelated to
French Canadians, E(1, 398) = 4.92, p < .05. In a pattern similar to the one found for the
readers of the French Canadian passages, when participants were not cognitively busy
their beliefs about French Canadian religiosity after reading the control passages were
somewhat related to their preexisting prejudice toward French Canadians (h = .11, E(1,
398) = 2.79, p < .10), while this relationship largely disappeared when the participants had
been cognitively busy memorizing the details of the unrelated passages, (12 = -.10), E(1,
398) = 2.17, p > .10. However, unlike the pattern for non-busy participants who had read

141

the French Canadian passages, when non-busy participants read the control passages,
more prejudiced participants tended to be more (as compared to less) likely to express
beliefs that were consistent with the content of the French Canadian passages than were
less prejudiced participants.

Belief Consistency with French Canadian Religiosity
by cognitive busyness, French Canadian vs control contrast, and
prejudice toward French Canadiam

Not Cognitively Busy Cognitively Busy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 1 1 l l
1.9 33 4.7 1.9 3.3 4.7

Prejurnce Toward Fluids Canarlans (+1. 1.5 so) P"indie. Toward “and: Cut-dun: (44- 1.5 SD)

 

 

Ff. Canadian Control Fr. Canadian CGIU'OI

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 20 - Belief Consistency with French Canadian Religiosity

Given this pattern of beliefs about French Canadian religiosity for the non-busy
control group, the differences between the beliefs of non-busy participants who had read
the French Canadian passages versus the unrelated, control passages are rather hard to
interpret. In fact, when examining the pattern of beliefs for the non-busy participants, the
effect of reading the French Canadian versus control passages was nonsigniﬁcant (E(1,
398) < l, p = n.s.) and, ﬁirthermore, there was a crossover interaction between cognitive
busyness and participants’ preexisting prejudice toward French Canadians, F(1, 398) =
6.44, p < .05. Although examination of the pattern of participants’ beliefs suggested that
the least prejudiced participants were more affected by the French Canadian versus control
passages while the reverse was true for the most prejudiced participants, these differences

142

were not signiﬁcant by conventional standards (both ps > .15).

Because the shift in the beliefs of the control group appeared to occur mainly for
the non-cognitively busy participants, the detemrination whether reading the French
Canadian passages affected the beliefs of the cognitively busy participants, over and above
the effect of reading the unrelated, control passages, can be made with more conﬁdence.
Compared to cognitively busy readers of the unrelated, control passages, cognitively busy
participants who had memorized the details of the French Canadian passages subsequently
expressed beliefs more consistent with the information contained in the passages about the
religiosity of French Canadians (Ms = 4.46 versus 4.06), E(1, 398) = 11.19, p < .01.
However, this effect was marginally qualiﬁed by participants’ preexisting attitudes about
French Canadians, F(1, 398) = 3.23, p < .10. Closer examination showed that for
cognitively busy participants, only the moderately and most prejudiced participants were
affected by reading the French Canadian versus control passages (most prejudiced: Ms =
4.44 versus 4.02, E( 1, 398) = 4.40, p < .05; moderately prejudiced: Ms = 4.75 versus
3.97, E(1, 398) = 11.60, p < .001; least prejudiced: 4.28 versus 4.17, E(1, 398) < 1, p =
n.s.).

Overall, reading the French Canadian passage information about the religiosity of
French Canadians appeared to affect the beliefs of the moderately and most prejudiced
participants, but only when they had memorized the details of the French Canadian
passages. However, due to a rather inexplicable shift in the non-busy control group, it is
hard to determine whether reading passages about French Canadians affected non-busy
participants’ beliefs about French Canadians, over and above the effect of reading
unrelated, control passages.

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