Recent research has posited the influence of narrative message portrayals on message recipient’s intergroup attitudes. This study furthers this line of inquiry in three ways. First the influence of exposure to narrative messages on people’s perceptions regarding “model minorities” is examined. Second, by examining the mechanisms behind some of the narrative effects, the theory in this area is furthered. Finally, unlike previous research, this study examines the issue in the context of health communication thereby bridging the gap between media effects and processes, person perception, and health communication research.
One-fourth of all physicians practicing medicine in the U.S. are considered international medical graduates and the majority of these physicians come from South Asian countries. Entertainment media’s portrayal of this group of physicians could influence message recipient’s affective and cognitive perceptions regarding international physicians as previous research is suggestive of unintended influences of entertainment portrayals. As evidenced by the findings in the research on patient-provider communication, perceptions regarding the healthcare provider can influence medical interaction, which in turn can influence patient’s subsequent health behavior.
Therefore, two experiments were conducted to understand the influence of narrative exposure on participant’s a) out-group attitudes and intergroup anxiety and b) accessibility of attitudes and attributes regarding the out-group, on encountering attitude object that looks similar to the character in the narrative.
Study 1 was a 1X3 experimental design (condition: positive, negative, control). Participants (n=251) were randomly assigned to watch one of the three videos. An edited episode of the show ER featuring a South Asian female physician as the protagonist served as the video stimuli used in the experiment. Following the exposure, the participants completed explicit measures of attitudes and other outcomes of interest. The main finding of the study stressed the importance of non-mediated contact with the out-group in influencing participant’s attitudes.
Study 1 provided some evidence that narrative involvement could influence out-group attitudes when the levels of contact with the out-group are low. One of the most striking findings of study 1was the probable engagement of participants in positive subtyping. Participants who watched a negative portrayal of South Asian physician reported her to be less typical of the out-group (South Asians) than those who watched the positively valenced portrayal suggestive of positive subtyping.
The study 1 results also suggested that the sample in the study had high levels of contact with the out-group South Asian. To make sure that the results obtained in study 1 were not due to the reluctance of the participants to express any negative feelings towards this out-group, it was decided to incorporate non-deliberative reaction time measures in study 2. Another reason for the inclusion of reaction-time measures was to test the proposed theoretical relationship between narrative engagement and accessibility of attitudes.
Participants in study 2 (n = 223) were asked to respond to a reaction time task to measure attitude and attribute accessibility. After watching the video, participants were asked to indicate, by pressing a key on the computer, whether they “liked” or “disliked” the pretested picture of a South Asian female physician. The response latency indicated the strength of the relationship. It was expected that the participants that have easily accessible favorable attitudes towards South Asians would be quicker to press the key indicating “like” when they saw the picture of a South Asian physician on screen. Those who don’t have easily accessible favorable attitudes would take longer to press the key, indicative of weaker attitude strength.
Another task instructed participants to indicate, by pressing a key associated with “yes” or “no”, if they associated a particular attribute with the pretested picture of a south Asian female physician. Again, the response latency indicated the strength of the response or how accessible the attribute was. The main purpose of this experiment was to see if the valence of the portrayal and narrative involvement influenced accessibility of attitude and attributes.
The results indicated that involvement in the narrative, especially identification with the out-group protagonist, influenced attitudes in line with the valence of the portrayal. Favorable attitudes toward the out-group became more easily accessible when participants were assigned to the positively valenced condition and when they identified with the protagonist. The converse was true for those assigned to the negatively valenced condition.
A noteworthy finding in the study 2 was that participants judged the same faces differently when they were asked to associate particular constructs with the faces. However when asked to indicate their affective evaluations, “like/dislike” judgment, the participants did not judge the faces differently. This suggests, albeit tentatively, that activation of attitudes may be easier than activation of more specific category attributes.
The findings have implications both theoretically and practically. In terms of theory, the results suggested that media engagement could influence attitude accessibility. The findings suggest that when an intergroup contact is made in a professional context (e.g. between patients and physicians) the mediated portrayals could influence attitude accessibility, especially for the viewers who don’t have much intergroup contact. These accessible attitudes can guide the behavior in a medical interaction which can have implications for health behavior and health-related outcomes in patients.