Date of Submission

Fall 2022

Academic Program

Psychology

Project Advisor 1

Thomas Hutcheon

Abstract/Artist's Statement

The United States has a deeply rooted history of racism that continues to impact our lives today, more specifically the lives of Black people. While external displays of racism are still being combated, the present study is interested in investigating perpetuations of racism that are more hidden, implicit biases. The accumulation and reinforcement of these biases are shaped by our experiences and therefore influence the way we interact with the world around us. The current study is interested in the power that media representation has on the mitigation of bias. Does the media representation of Black people predict levels of implicit bias among Black and White participants? Participant media consumption was collected and implicit bias was measured using the Implicit Associations Test (IAT). A follow-up section of the study looked at people’s self-reported level of representation growing up specific to the representation of Black people. A series of correlational tests reported a non-statistically significant relationship between media consumption and implicit bias as well with implicit bias and representation growing up. However, there was a positive relationship between media consumption and representation growing up. Additional analysis was conducted to investigate potential differences across races. The current study shows that though media representation is important, there are many more variables at play that call for deeper discussions and a wide range of ways to address the social issues attached to them.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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