They Are What You Hear in Media Reports: The Racial Stereotypes toward Uyghurs Activated by Media

Jia Jin, Guanxiong Pei, Qingguo Ma

Stereotypes from the major nationality toward minorities constitute a widely concerning problem in many countries. As reported by previous studies, stereotypes can be activated by media information that portrays the negative aspects of the target group. The current study focused on the neural basis of the modulation of negative media information on Han Chinese stereotypes toward Uyghurs by using event-related potentials. We employed the lexical decision task, in which participants were asked to categorize the presented word as positive or negative. Behavioral result showed that participants had a shorter reaction time to positive adjectives than to negative adjectives. The data of brain activity showed that compared with the Han condition, the Uyghurs condition elicited smaller N400 differences in the media priming group, whereas there was no significant N400 deflection difference between Han Chinese and Uyghurs in the control group. The current results suggested that the negative media information might influence their judgments toward other groups reflected in the deflection of N400 amplitude. Therefore, in order to mitigate or even eliminate stereotypes about national minorities, the effort of the media is important.