Prejudice from thin air: The effect of emotion on automatic intergroup attitudes

Two experiments provide initial evidence that specific emotional states are capable of creating automatic prejudice toward outgroups. Specifically, we propose that anger should influence automatic evaluations of outgroups because of its functional relevance to intergroup conflict and competition, whereas other negative emotions less relevant to intergroup relations (e.g., sadness) should not. In both experiments, after minimal ingroups and outgroups were created, participants were induced to experience anger, sadness, or a neutral state. Automatic attitudes toward the in- and outgroups were then assessed using an evaluative priming measure (Experiment 1) and the Implicit Association Test (Experiment 2). As predicted, results showed that anger created automatic prejudice toward the outgroup, whereas sadness and neutrality resulted in no automatic intergroup bias. The implications of these findings for emotion-induced biases in implicit intergroup cognition in particular, and in social cognition in general, are considered.