Journal
NURSING RESEARCH
Volume 62, Issue 5, Pages 362-367Publisher
LIPPINCOTT WILLIAMS & WILKINS
DOI: 10.1097/NNR.0b013e31829e02ec
Keywords
healthcare disparities; Hispanic Americans; minority health; nonconscious processes; prejudice; stereotyping
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Funding
- NIH [5R01MD005902-02]
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Background: Current research on nonconscious stereotyping in healthcare is limited by an emphasis on practicing physicians' beliefs about African American patients and by heavy reliance on a measure of nonconscious processes that allows participants to exert control over their behaviors if they are motivated to appear nonbiased. Objectives: The present research examined whether nursing and medical students exhibit nonconscious activation of stereotypes about Hispanic patients using a task that subliminally primes patient ethnicity. It was hypothesized that participants would exhibit greater activation of noncompliance and health risk stereotypes after subliminal exposure to Hispanic faces compared with non-Hispanic White faces and, because ethnicity was primed outside of conscious awareness, that explicit motivations to control prejudice would not moderate stereotype activation. Methods: Nursing and medical students completed a sequential priming task that measured the speed with which they recognized words related to noncompliance and health risk after subliminal exposure to Hispanic and non-Hispanic White faces. They then completed explicit measures of their motivation to control prejudice against Hispanics. Results: Both nursing and medical students exhibited greater activation of noncompliance and health risk words after subliminal exposure to Hispanic faces, compared with non-Hispanic White faces. Explicit motivations to control prejudice did not moderate stereotype activation. Discussion: These findings show that, regardless of their motivation to treat Hispanics fairly, nursing and medical students exhibit nonconscious activation of negative stereotypes when they encounter Hispanics. Implications are discussed.
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