Discrimination Index, Racist Events, and Their Effects on Behavioral and Evaluative Outcomes of Movie Posters With Black and White Protagonists

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session II
  In Interactive Paper Session: Information Systems Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

This study examined behavioral and evaluative outcomes of movie posters featuring Black or White actors and actresses. This study moved beyond the sociological perspective on ethnocentrism to argue that psychological factors of discrimination and experience of racist events were better predictors of perceptive, intentional, and evaluative effects. A 2 (Black and White) X 2 (Horror and Romance) X 3 (Posters) within subject experiment was conducted to test the effects of participant race, discrimination index, and racial experience on poster evaluations and viewing intention. Results indicated that race of participants did have blanket effects. However, the discrimination index and experience of racist events sometimes explained greater amount of variance in the dependent variables. Implications were discussed.

Authors

• Shuhua Zhou, U of Alabama

• Lin Yang, Xi'an Jiaotong U