Effect of Implicit Prejudice on Intergroup Conflict: The Cognitive Processing Bias Perspective

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Intergroup Conflict
• Cross-Cultural Psychology

Background:

• Social prejudice is strongly linked to intergroup conflict.
• Previous research has not focused on prejudice's triggering role in Eastern cultures.
• Patient-physician conflict in China serves as a specific case study.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effect of social prejudice on information processing during patient-physician conflict.
• To examine how prejudice influences selective attention bias, memory accessibility, and attribution bias.
• To test the Interpretation-First Model of aggressive information processing in an Eastern cultural context.

Main Methods:

• Employed three experimental paradigms: Emotional Stroop Task, Lexical Decision Task (LDT), and Story Completion Protocol (SCP).
• Assessed implicit and explicit social prejudice.
• Primed participants with implicit patient-physician prejudice to observe effects on cognitive processes.

Main Results:

• Revealed a dissociation between implicit and explicit patient-physician prejudice; implicit prejudice was detected, but explicit prejudice was not.
• Implicit prejudice priming significantly impacted reaction times in the Emotional Stroop Task and Story Completion Protocol.
• No significant effect of implicit prejudice priming was found on the Lexical Decision Task, suggesting no impact on memory accessibility.

Conclusions:

• Implicit social prejudice plays a triggering role in patient-physician conflict.
• Prejudice primarily affects earlier stages of information processing, specifically selective attention and hostile attribution bias.
• Findings support the Interpretation-First Model of aggressive information processing.