The Psychology of Bigotry 517conflict between core American values, on one hand, and a
desire to avoid appearing prejudiced, on the other.
For prejudiced White persons, on the other hand, the cul-
tural stereotype of Blacks and their personal beliefs about
them are congruent with one another. Because they do not
conflict, there would be little need for them to censor their
negative personal beliefs concerning Black people. Thus, ac-
cording to the dissociation model, White persons varying in
prejudice toward Black people should differ on cognitive
tasks involving controlled processing but not on tasks involv-
ing automatic processing.
Devine (1989) supported her dissociation model with
three studies, in which the MRS served as the measure used
to define high versus low levels of prejudice in White par-
ticipants. One study demonstrated that on an open-ended
measure, both high- and low-prejudice White participants
listed very similar characteristics, and predominantly nega-
tive ones, when asked to describe the cultural stereotype of
Black people—an effect since replicated by other investiga-
tors in the United States and the United Kingdom (e.g.,
Lepore & Brown, 1997). Another study deployed a con-
trolled processing task by giving participants ample time to
list alternative labels for “Black Americans” and then asking
them to list all of their thoughts in response to this label.
Thoughts on this listing task were categorized by judges as
being positive beliefs, negative beliefs, or traits. Highly prej-
udiced White participants listed negative traits most often,
while less prejudiced ones were more likely to list thoughts
reflecting positive beliefs—uncontroverisal and unsurprising
results.
In what has since become a more controversial study,
however, Devine (1989) also compared reactions of White
persons varying in prejudice on an automatic processing task
in which participants were subliminally presented with word
primes parafoveally (i.e., outside the central visual field)
while performing a perceptual vigilance task. Word primes
were related to the Black stereotype either 20% or 80% of the
time and included reference both to the category Blacks and
to stereotypic traits for Black Americans (e.g., lazy, poor, op-
pressed, etc.). Following this automatic processing task in
which participants had been primed to varying extent with
racially relevant stimuli, they read an ambiguous story about
a male person of unspecified race performing various as-
sertive behaviors and then rendered their impressions of him.
As predicted by the dissociation model, impressions of the
stimulus person were affected by the automatic processing
task in that attributions of hostility were more likely when
primes from the preceding automatic processing task had
been proportionally more stereotypically oriented (i.e., in the
80% condition instead of the 20% one), with no difference as
a function of the participants’ level of prejudice.
From the preceding research, Devine (1989) concluded
that controlled processing rather than automatic processing
differentiates the highly prejudiced from their less prejudiced
White counterparts. Moreover, White people with egalitarian
ideals employ controlled processing to try to behave and
think in an unprejudiced manner toward Black people. Both
high- and low-prejudiced White Americans have the same
stereotypic knowledge of Black people and are presumably
both susceptible to having this stereotypic knowledge that is
presumably elicited automatically beneath their awareness.
However, stereotypic and prejudicial responses can be over-
ridden by intentional and flexible controlled processing.
Deciding to be unprejudiced is, according to the dissocia-
tion model, a conscious, intentional act of controlled process-
ing. Inhibiting and overriding stereotypic and prejudicial
responses elicited by automatic activation processes and re-
placing them with more appropriate and positive beliefs to-
ward Blacks and other minorities held by individuals seeking
to be unprejudiced is akin, Devine has argued, to their “break-
ing a bad habit.” That is, the White person trying to be un-
prejudiced toward Black people must consciously and
deliberately decide to forego prejudicial beliefs and actions
(the bad, old habit) and to replace them with new attitudes and
behaviors consistent with an egalitarian outlook (the new,
good habit). In essence, Devine’s (1989) dissociation model
suggests that for those seeking to be (or actually being) un-
prejudiced, automatic and controlled processes must become
dissociatedfrom one another, with the good habit of tolerance
strengthened at the expense of the bad habit of prejudice.
Monteith (1993; Monteith, Devine, & Zuwerink, 1993;
Monteith & Walters, 1998) and her colleagues (Devine &
Monteith, 1999; Devine, Monteith, Zuwerink, & Elliot,
1991) have explored in depth the self-regulatory processes by
which low-prejudice White Americans (i.e., those who score
low on prejudice measures, such as the MRS) inhibit preju-
diced responses and maintain egalitarian standards. First,
low-prejudice Whites do indeed have personal beliefs and
standards against expressing prejudice toward oppressed
groups, such as Black people and homosexuals, but many of
the former also acknowledge responding from time to time in
ways that are more prejudiced than their personal beliefs
would warrant. Second, when they do find themselves
exhibiting a biased response toward an oppressed group
member (i.e., what Monteith and her colleagues term a
prejudice-related discrepancy), low-prejudice White
Americans experience emotional responses in the form of
guilt and negative, self-directed affect as well as increased