This paper analyzes a 2008 study investigating whether Barack Obama's election as the first African-American U.S. President affected racial attitudes among college students. Using a pre- and post-election design, 40 undergraduates completed explicit attitude scales and implicit association tasks measuring responses to Black and White targets. Results showed that implicit prejudice decreased significantly after the election, suggesting exposure to positive racial exemplars reduces short-term implicit bias. However, explicit prejudice remained largely unchanged. The authors conclude that while the election had measurable effects on implicit attitudes, various contextual factors—including media exposure, demographics, and prior familiarity—complicate broader conclusions about lasting social change in racial attitudes.
The November 2008 election of Barack Obama as America's first African-American President was seminal in many ways. For some, it represented a repudiation of early twenty-first century divisiveness; for others, it was strong proof that America had finally developed the ability to evaluate qualified political candidates without racial bias. However, despite the political fervor surrounding the election, many researchers asked a more nuanced question: What does Obama's victory mean for general views of racial diversity in the United States, and was it a victory against racial prejudice itself?
The goal of the study "Is Obama's Win a Gain for Blacks?" was to examine these questions directly and to determine what differences in both explicit and implicit prejudice against Black Americans may have changed as a result of the election. The election itself was quite important, and there was at least some evidence that Obama's success may have changed, or continue to change, attitudes. However, probing covert and overt prejudice is far more complex, particularly when trying to distinguish genuine shifts in bias from behavior shaped by media popularization or social desirability.
Of greater relevance to social psychology is how Obama's victory may affect implicit associations with both Black and White targets. Previous research had shown that when individuals were exposed to positive examples of racial role models their attitudes changed, but only for brief periods—the duration depending on the strength and nature of the exposure to these exemplars.
Forty undergraduates (23 female, 17 male) enrolled in an introductory psychology course participated in a two-session study. They were given partial course credit for their participation, and 100 percent of those who began the study completed both sessions.
The first session occurred seven days prior to the 2008 election. Participants completed the Attitudes Towards Blacks scale (Brigham, 1993), responding to 20 items on a 1-to-7 scale. Items were framed to measure pro-race, neutral, or positive attitudes (such as "Black and white people are inherently equal"). Higher scores indicated greater agreement with egalitarian statements.
Following the explicit attitude measure, participants completed a racial Implicit Association Task (IAT), adapted from Greenwald, McGhee, and Schwartz (1998). This computerized task instructed participants to categorize photographs of Black and White faces as quickly and accurately as possible while pairing them with words of positive valence (good, kind) and negative valence (bad, evil). The task measures the speed and accuracy of associations between racial groups and evaluative concepts. Appropriate demographic and psychographic information was collected during this session.
The second session occurred approximately one week after the election. Participants completed the identical Attitudes Towards Blacks scale and the racial IAT under the same conditions, allowing for direct pre-post comparison of both explicit attitudes and implicit associations.
Implicit prejudice was examined by calculating each participant's mean response latency on "compatible" trials (e.g., Black faces + negative words) versus "incompatible" trials (e.g., Black faces + positive words). Larger differences indicate stronger implicit associations between the racial group and negative concepts. All samples were analyzed for outliers and errors; only 3 percent of participants' data were flagged for statistical irregularities and excluded from analysis.
Paired t-tests examined differences between pre- and post-election scores on the explicit Attitudes Towards Blacks scale. The results indicated minimal change in explicit prejudice from before to after the election. However, when implicit association data were analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) methods, a statistically significant interaction emerged between time (pre vs. post) and implicit bias direction. Mean response latency on the IAT decreased from pre-election (M = 892, SD = 188 milliseconds) to post-election (M = 769.7, SD = 141 milliseconds), indicating faster and more egalitarian implicit associations after the election.
The interpretation of this data is noteworthy: individuals responded faster and more consistently with egalitarian associations after exposure to Obama's election victory. This pattern is consistent with the hypothesis that positive exposure to group exemplars—in this case, a prominent Black political figure in a position of high status—reduces short-term implicit bias. In practical terms, when research subjects are exposed to positive information about or examples of people from different racial or ethnic backgrounds, they are more likely to respond with positive implicit associations with those groups, at least temporarily.
"Election shifted implicit bias temporarily via exemplar exposure"
"Small sample and demographic limitations; need longitudinal work"
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