Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 14, 2026

Post-Movie Subliminal Measurement (PMSM), for Investigating Implicit Social Bias
Published on: February 29, 2020
Minority perceptions of Whites' motives for responding without prejudice: the perceived internal and external
Brenda Major1, Pamela J Sawyer, Jonathan W Kunstman
1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, 552 University Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA. brenda.major@psych.ucsb.edu
Abstract:
Whites' nonprejudiced behavior toward racial/ethnic minorities can be attributionally ambiguous for perceivers, who may wonder whether the behavior was motivated by a genuine internal commitment to egalitarianism or was externally motivated by desires to avoid appearing prejudiced to others. This article reports the development of a scale that measures perceptions of Whites' internal and external motives for avoiding prejudice (Perceived Internal Motivation Scale/Perceived External Motivation Scale [PIMS/PEMS]) and tests of its internal, test-retest, discriminant, convergent, and predictive validity among ethnic minority perceivers. Minorities perceived Whites as having internal and external motives for nonprejudiced behavior that were theoretically consistent with but distinct from established measures of minority-group members' concerns in interracial interactions. Tests of the predictive validity of PIMS/PEMS showed that when a White evaluator praised the mediocre essay of a minority target, minorities who were high PEMS and low PIMS were most likely to regard the feedback as inauthentic and derogate the quality of the essay.
Related Concept Videos
Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Surveys
Motivational Bias
Stereotype Content Model
Correspondence Bias
Implicit Personality Theories
