The Effect of News Peril-type on Social Inclinations: A Social Group Comparison

Abstract

One of the most potent ways to communicate stigma is associating a group with peril. In this study, we examine how different forms of peril representations influence specific patterns of interpersonal inclinations. We explore how key social perceptions of group warmth and competence may serve as explanatory mediating mechanisms. Although African Americans and Arab-Muslims similarly share close mediated associations with threat, an empirical examination of how interaction intentions toward both groups differ under congruent conditions is warranted. Results demonstrate support for expectations pertaining to Arab-Muslims, though not African Americans, revealing the complicated nature of threat-influenced antipathy toward these groups.

Keywords

stigma intergroup threat theory stereotype content model interaction inclinations

In the United States, survey research has suggested that a majority of the general public views their fellow members of society as untrustworthy (General Social Survey, 2014). A meaningful amount of this suspicion is often oriented toward specific social groups, particularly when those groups are perceived as dangerous due to the threats that they pose to the rest of society. Two social groups routinely associated with threatening depiction types—particularly threats associated with physical danger—are African Americans (Dixon & Azocar, 2006) and Arab-Muslims (e.g., Alsultany, 2012). Researchers have observed that exposure to these representations in news content is associated with negative perceptions toward both African Americans (e.g., Hurley, Jensen, Weaver, & Dixon, 2015) and Arab-Muslims (e.g., Das, Bushman, Bezemer, Kerkhof, & Vermeulen, 2009). Indeed, these are two of the most feared sociocultural groups in the United States (Brown, Ali, Stone, & Jewell, 2017; Bushman & Bonacci, 2004). Although African Americans are typically more associated with an urban/gang-related threat, whereas Arab-Muslims are associated with terrorist activity, researchers have observed that in both cases, news consumers will associate these groups with their respective threats even when the issue consumed in the news contains no social group references (Dixon & Azocar, 2006; Saleem & Anderson, 2013).

Thus, in the United States, these two social groups have had a complicated, and often adverse, history with regard to their portrayal in the news environment and treatment within society (e.g., Khan, 2013). These routinely stigmatized groups are often depicted in ways that result in parallel types of general threat perceptions. Of course, the histories and related cultural perceptions of both of these groups are certainly not identical. Indeed, as aforementioned, both social groups have experienced, and been stereotypically associated with, different specific manifestations of threat. It is unknown, however, whether and how the general forms of peril association in media have disparate influences on viewers’ subsequent interpersonal inclinations toward African Americans compared with Arab-Muslims. While it would be sensible to expect that perceptions of these two groups could diverge—even under congruent representation conditions—currently, the literature does not yield insights regarding the nature and direction of this divergence. Extant mediated threat research has much to gain from empirical comparisons of how various threat depiction types of stigmatized groups in news stories could differentially influence the accessibility of interpersonal inclinations regarding those groups among modern news consumers.

As stated above, prior research has informatively demonstrated how media portrayals associated with social group threat can precipitate negative social perceptions. Consumption of threatening images of those with mental illness (e.g., Quintero Johnson & Riles, 2018; Riles, 2018), Latinx individuals (e.g., Mastro, Behm-Morawitz, & Ortiz, 2007), African Americans (e.g., Dixon & Azocar, 2006), and Arab-Muslims (e.g., Das et al., 2009) have all been associated with negative social perception outcomes. Although the aforementioned effects of media consumption could clearly have implications for interpersonal behavior, research in this area too rarely focuses specifically on the ways in which media may influence people’s desire for social closeness or distance with stigmatized social groups.

As such, this article serves as a contribution to media effects research in several ways. We examine how different forms of mediated representations of peril (i.e., threat) result in specific patterns of desired social distance with stigmatized groups. We incorporate models of accessibility (e.g., priming; Berkowitz, 1984) and Fiske and colleagues’ stereotype content model (SCM; e.g., Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002), to examine how social perceptions of group warmth and competence may serve as explanatory mechanisms mediating the relationship between media threat exposure and social inclinations. Finally, given that African Americans and Arab-Muslims share close associations with similar threat types, we provide an empirical examination of how interaction intentions toward both groups differ under congruent media exposure conditions, an endeavor, to our knowledge, yet to be undertaken. Such a comparison affords opportunities to better understand the degree to which different types of threat depictions of stigmatized groups in news articles may have unique effect patterns on perceptions of each group and when other effect patterns generalize.

Review of Literature

If media messages are capable of having an influence on how people socially interact with one another, this phenomenon may be a result of alterations in the most salient conceptions of those interactions. Priming theory—and models of accessibility, in general—suggests that our reactions to a primary event or object are routinely based on its perceived associations with other concepts or attributes within our cognitive associative network (Berkowitz, 1984). Media priming, in particular, is used to describe the way in which mediated content can shape how particular concepts will make others more accessible, thus, influencing the manner in which people respond to that which is depicted in the mediated content (Roskos-Ewoldsen, Roskos-Ewoldsen, Dillman, & Carpentier, 2002). This theoretical approach is used to contend that our perceptions of the world, and our subsequent interactions with our environment, are often shaped by the media to which we are exposed. Essentially, the accessibility of the images we consume is argued to influence the manner in which we perceive others and navigate our social and physical spaces.

The accessibility of mediated imagery depends, in large part, on the recency and frequency with which we consume particular portrayal types, as well as the perceived vividness of the content (Riddle, 2010). Prior research has demonstrated the potential for both frequent and recent exposure to specific message-types to influence perceptions about African Americans (e.g., Dixon, 2008; Power, Murphy, & Coover, 1996; Ramasubramanian, 2015) and Arab-Muslims (e.g., Saleem, Yang, & Ramasubramanian, 2016). In addition, researchers have observed the influence of consuming relatively more engrossing messages on social judgments about groups of individuals (e.g., Riddle, 2010), thus, demonstrating the role of vividness on the accessibility of portrayal-consistent perceptions. Vividness, as a facilitator of accessibility, is a feature of content that makes media depictions perceptually proximate in a sensory or spatial fashion (i.e., enhanced feeling of involvement; Nisbett & Ross, 1980). It pertains to those emotionally evocative or even sensational cues that facilitate immersion (i.e., being transported or absorbed into a message). Given that depictions of African Americans and Arab-Muslims are often accompanied by sensational indications of threat, priming theory could be used to argue that routine or recent consumption of this material may influence consumers’ associative networks with regard to these social groups. A social encounter with an African American or Arab-Muslim could then be expected to activate threat perceptions among those who had previously consumed such material. As a result of spreading activation processes, a media consumer could become hesitant or even fearful of a potential interaction with the stigmatized social group. Such a phenomenon could have dire ramifications upon those who are the subject of these persistent, negative portrayals.

The concepts of accessibility and spreading activation are core elements of media priming theory and they provide an explanation for how social inclinations may not be deliberate nor experienced with a specific set of rewards or consequences in mind (e.g., Devine, 1989). They, instead, may occur automatically as a result of some salient cue(s) to which one was previously exposed. Thus, we argue that a priming framework, emphasizing accessibility of content cues, is a useful framework for assessing how approach/avoidance tendencies and interpersonal interaction inclinations may be influenced by media use. In this study, we explore how these social inclinations differ by exposure to different depictions of stigmatized social groups, notably, when different forms of group peril are emphasized.

Stigma, Peril, and Threats

An examination of the techniques by which news media associate a social group with threat serves to reveal the everyday, concrete social implications of news production and consumption behaviors. One critical perception capable of being influenced by news consumption is social stigma. Stigma has been defined as “a simplified, standardized image of the disgrace of certain people that is held in common by a community at large” (Smith, 2007a, p. 464). According to Smith (2007a), stigma is highly related to stereotypes, which are formulaic and simplified images about a group and its members (Ashmore & Del Boca, 1981). As such, perceived stigma is, to a substantial degree, based on the perceived generalization of various attributes and evaluations by a public. Such awareness of stereotypes often originates in the types of messages to which media consumers are exposed (Quintero Johnson & Riles, 2018). Messages are argued to prime stigma via the following cues:

(a) a mark for categorization in a stigmatized group, (b) [labeling] the stigmatized group as a separate group entity, (c) responsibility for placement in the stigmatized group and resulting group threat, and (d) cues to danger the group and its members face and reminders for unremarked members to protect themselves and to support collective efforts to eliminate the threat. (Italics added, Smith, 2007a, p. 468)

In short, the four components, respectively, are marks, labels, responsibility, and peril. According to Smith (2007a) these stigma cues can increase an individual’s negative perceptions of the social group and evoke emotional responses such as disgust, fear, and anger. An increase in negative perceptions toward a particular group, after exposure to stigmatizing messages, is suggested to result in the sharing of the message ideas with ingroup members, and a strengthened internalization of perceived group divisions. Of the four aforementioned stigma communication cues, research has indicated that the most potent way to communicate stigma perceptions and negative attitudes is the manner in which that group is attached to peril perceptions (Smith, 2012).

Peril perceptions can be defined as that which “describes the physical or social threat to a community’s effective functioning brought by the stigmatized” (Smith, 2014, p. 157). In an experiment examining the effect of manipulating the four stigma communication cues, as they relate to infectious disease, Smith (2012) found that messages with high levels of peril most notably influenced the strength of individuals’ stigma beliefs. This effect was larger in magnitude than manipulations of the other four cues, suggesting a vital role that peril plays in the manifestation of stigma and stigma-related outcomes. Peril perceptions can be transmitted via both verbal and nonverbal communication. In verbal communication, peril can be induced by various textual cues (Smith, 2007a): signal words (a single word to show danger to a reader, such as “danger!” or “warning!”), hazard statement (a statement to describe a specific quality to pose a threat, such as “young sex workers living in the city”), hazard avoidance statement (a statement like recommendations to avoid a stigmatized person/group, such as “avoid contact with people from Braavos”), and consequences statement (a statement to depict what will happen regarding the threats and dangers related to a stigmatized group, such as “avoid Braavosis, and you do not have to feel dirty or shameful”). In addition, peril can be communicated as nonverbal codes using specific types of music, sound effects, camera angles, and lighting effects that imply dangerous situations or fears to be evoked by threats.

Two primary peril forms routinely highlighted in stigma research are physical and social/value threat (Meisenbach, 2010; Smith, 2007b, 2012); Drawing, in part, from intergroup threat theory (Stephan, Ybarra, & Morrison, 2009)—a framework used to describe how perceived threat develops between social groups—a distinction is made between perceived threats to the physical well-being of an ingroup and threats to the values, belief systems, and worldview of an ingroup. Physical peril includes threats like aggressive actions or violence to harm others in a community. Stephan and colleagues (2009) describe this type of threat as a “realistic threat.” News reports emphasizing murder, assault, or kidnapping would be examples of this type of threat. Value peril pertains to threats to the norms, morals, or culture of a valued ingroup or what Stephan and colleagues (2009) refer to as a “symbolic threat.” News content emphasizing a threat to various perceived cultural standards (e.g., fashion, beauty, art, or religion) would be examples of this type of threat. Both African Americans and Arab-Muslims have been observed to be discussed in the media as a threat to the physical (e.g., Das et al., 2009; Hurley et al., 2015) and social (e.g., Khan, 2013) well-being of American society.

Both physical and value peril have been observed to be associated with animosity and distancing from the perceived group threat (Smith, 2012; Stephan et al., 2009). If the idea is made salient that a particular social group may pose a physical and/or symbolic danger to one’s self or close others, the heightened accessibility of these ideas could clearly influence inclinations to approach or avoid an interaction with its group members. More research is necessary that compares the mediated priming effects of these threat-types with one another and among different groups. In one study which pertains to this line of inquiry, Hartman, Newman and Bell (2014) observed that immigrants’ “realistic transgressions”—operationalized as physical threats to one’s finances (e.g., working “under the table”)—resulted in more negative evaluations toward social groups than “symbolic transgressions”—operationalized as threats to the majority’s values (e.g., rooting for a foreign sports team). Moreover, they observed that, under symbolic threat conditions, negative outcomes were worse for Mexican immigrants than United Kingdom or Canadian immigrants. In this study, participants were asked to imagine the threats and subsequently provide judgments. In an examination of the potentially diverse effect of these two threat-types in a mediated context, Stephan, Renfro, Esses, Stephan, and Martin (2005) explored how Tutsi immigrants in Rwanda were perceived after participants were exposed to different newsmagazine articles about them. Once more, physical threat was manipulated by suggesting that the Tutsis would pose a financial burden to the Rwandan majority, whereas the value threat pertained to differing religious practices. These researchers observed that though both threat-types unexpectedly resulted in more positive attitudes compared with the control condition, differences were not statistically significant. Only when both forms of peril were used in concert, did they result in significantly more negative attitudes toward Tutsis than the control condition.

With regard to the comparison of each form of peril, the aforementioned studies, taken together, fail to offer a conclusive pattern. Moreover, the comparison of groups as they relate to these threats was conducted in a nonmediated, hypothetical scenario. The present experiment will add to this body of research by exploring the effect of this most potent stigma communication cue within a nonimmigrant, crime news context. As such, the physical peril under examination will adhere more closely with a threat to one’s immediate survival posed by African Americans and Arab-Muslims. For example, in Dixon and Azocar’s (2006) examination of African Americans on television news, it was found that African Americans are more often represented with urban/gang-related threats compared with other groups. Relatedly, Saleem and Anderson (2013) observed that Arab-Muslims are frequently associated with violence or terrorism across media outlets. Dixon and Williams (2015) have also observed these content patterns related to African Americans and Arab-Muslims, respectively, and further demonstrated that this content disproportionately overrepresents the degree to which these groups actually engage in these threats. The effects of exposure to such distortions on the accessibility of negative perceptions are well established. For example, according to Das and colleagues (2009), consumption of news related to a Muslim extremist terror attack resulted in increased fear and prejudicial attitudes toward Arab-Muslims. Correspondingly, a study about the effect of exposure to African Americans in crime news (Hurley et al., 2015) found that greater exposure to crime news about African Americans similarly results in more negative perceptual outcomes.

Although scholars have observed the influence of peril messages on social perceptions, an examination of how these messages could influence actual interpersonal interaction inclinations has received far less attention. To our knowledge, prior research has yet to explore how different peril-types could uniquely influence interpersonal inclinations toward different groups, both of whom are ubiquitously linked with each form of threat. Furthermore, exploring such comparisons, within the context of the underlying psychological mechanisms (i.e., internal cognitions) which give rise to variations, would serve to advance theorizing in the domain of stigma and threat communication via media.

SCM

We seek to further contextualize the nature of our inquiry by exploring potentially key underlying psychological mechanisms, incorporating the SCM (e.g., Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2008) to explore perceptions of warmth and competence as mediating influences. Whereas warmth perceptions are argued to indicate the evaluative direction of motivations that can be anticipated with regard to a given group (e.g., good or bad), competence perceptions pertain to the perceived ability of members of the group to carry out their motivations (Cuddy et al., 2008).

Fiske et al. (2002) note that quite often, people develop their perceptions of groups according to stereotypes indicative of that group’s competence and warmth. This, in turn, affects the extent to which the group is seen as competitive and enviable, or noncompetitive and pitiable. In constructing this model, these researchers surveyed participants about their views toward different social groups in a number of countries and regions. In the United States, they integrated findings of both spectra (i.e., warmth and competence) into an axis, identifying four primary identity cluster extremes: (a) low warmth and low competence (e.g., homeless individuals, the poverty-stricken, and welfare recipients), (b) high warmth and low competence (e.g., the elderly, disabled individuals, and those with a mental health condition), (c) high competence and low warmth (e.g., Asians, educated people, Jewish people, men, professionals, and rich people), and (d) high competence and high warmth (e.g., Christians, middle-class people, students, and Caucasian people). It should be noted that those most commonly perceived to be in this latter group are usually the identities of majority ingroups represented among those surveyed. These groups are often portrayed in the media in greater number, and with more nuance and sociability associated with group members (Riles, Varava, Pilny, & Tewksbury, 2018). In this research by Fiske and colleagues (2002), both African Americans and Arab-Muslims were observed to often be associated with medium levels of warmth and competence, putting both of these groups in the position of existing outside of the four primary identity clusters, suggesting they are seen neither as fully competitive and enviable, nor as fully noncompetitive and pitiable. This phenomenon may suggest that these specific groups are perceived in relatively complex ways by the general public, whether due to in-person or mediated exposure to these groups.

It remains necessary to ascertain how these perceptions could manifest as an effect of message exposure which mediates subsequent social inclinations. For example, if certain threat perceptions are made salient with regard to African Americans and Arab-Muslims, we might expect perceptions of warmth and competence to be pulled away from this middle ground, thereby affecting a dominant group’s perception of them. Indeed, African Americans have historically been associated in the media with criminality and negative social indicators (e.g., Dixon & Azocar, 2006; Tukachinsky, Mastro, & Yarchi, 2015) which have been repeatedly associated with more negative beliefs and attitudes toward this social group (e.g., Dixon, 2008; Hurley et al., 2015). Similarly, Arab-Muslims are routinely (and distortedly) portrayed as terrorists (e.g., Dixon & Williams, 2015; Eid, 2014; Shaheen, 2009) and, as a result of this exposure, beliefs and attitudes toward this social group also become staunchly more negative (e.g., Saleem & Anderson, 2013; Saleem, Prot, Anderson, & Lemieux, 2015).

With only a few notable exceptions, the SCM framework has not been routinely applied to explorations of the influence of media consumption on social perceptions. Exceptions to this trend have primarily been oriented toward entertainment media (e.g., Bresnahan & Lee, 2011) and have been associated with mixed model support (e.g., Sanders & Ramasubramanian, 2012). Even rarer is an application of the SCM to news-based social perceptions. In a manner adjacent to this endeavor, Bligh, Schlehofer, Casad, and Gaffney (2012) examined how coverage of a female politician influenced her ratings. Although the use of warmth and competence ratings differed slightly from their common usage (i.e., they were oriented toward perceptions of the politician and not a social group), results were largely supportive of the model (i.e., negative coverage was associated with less warmth and a focus on the politician’s ability was associated with heightened perceptions of competence). Here, we explore how these perceptions may serve to explain how different peril-types could influence social inclinations.

In line with our discussion of previous research, we developed the following hypotheses:

H1: The presence of peril will negatively influence perceptions of social group warmth.

H2: Perceptions of social group warmth will be negatively related to preferred social distance.

Thus, we expect peril-type to have an indirect effect on social distance preferences. Our proposed model is depicted in Figure 1. Furthermore, following the logic that individuals will be more concerned with a physical threat, compared with social threat (e.g., Hartman et al., 2014), physical peril is expected to be characterized by relatively less warmth than value peril.

H3: Exposure to physical peril will be related to lower ratings of a social group’s warmth in comparison with exposure to value peril.

Figure 1.

Analytical model of social group-based peril effects.

Although SCM suggests that competence should analogously matter with regard to predicting social inclinations, it is less clear what its exact nature will be as a mediating factor with regard to the effect of peril on social inclinations. Peril perceptions do not as clearly portend an influence on considerations of ability (e.g., Bligh et al., 2012)—which would be expected to influence competence perceptions. Although it is conceivable that as a social group is perceived as more of a threat, perceivers will also consider the group more capable of carrying out threats, a group can also conceivably be threatening with relatively lower levels of threat success, so long as the attempts at peril are rampant.

RQ1: Do perceptions of a social group’s competence mediate the influence of peril-type on preferred social distance?

Moreover, due to the lack of research pertaining to social group comparisons within the present context, we offer the following research question.

RQ2: How might African Americans and Arab-Muslims differ with regard to the influence of congruent peril-types on interaction inclinations?

Method

This study employed a 2 (African American perceptions, Arab-Muslim perceptions) × 3 (physical threat, value threat, and a control video) between-subjects experimental design.

Stimulus

Mock online news articles were produced that were adapted from real news items. They described a member of one of these two social groups engaging in activity that would promote a sense of one of the two types of peril. Articles that differed by social group remained congruent in terms of general location of events (i.e., Washington DC metropolitan area), structure and length of article, and the type of threat. The physical threat conditions contained articles describing an African American or Arab-Muslim male committing murder which was described as suspected gang-related or terrorist activity, respectively. The value threat conditions contained articles describing an African American or Arab-Muslim male in a position of authority, imposing a stereotypical lifestyle preference related to art or religion (e.g., Stephan et al., 2009) on an outgroup majority. Control articles, also set in the Washington DC area, featured a story about unexpected cold weather killing off the annual cherry blossoms. Pilot testing (N = 100) revealed that between-social group articles, the magnitude of ratings for article valence, understandability, and perceived physical and social threat were statistically equivalent, thereby facilitating our group comparisons.

Participants and Procedure

A two-pronged recruitment approach was used. Participants were first recruited from a Midwestern city in the vicinity a large university (N = 180). Recruitment announcements were shared with local organizations, churches, and community groups. Second, a Qualtrics community panel was used to obtain a broader, more representative sample (N=235). Checks revealed no significant differences between the community and Qualtrics samples in terms of overall ratings on primary variables; therefore, these samples were collapsed. After removing incomplete submissions and data from those who failed our survey attention checks, 369 participants remained. Demographic descriptive statistics for these participants are presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics for Main Variables.

Variable	Overall		Community panel		Qualtrics panel		Cronbach’s α
Variable	M	SD	M	SD	M	SD	Cronbach’s α
Warmth	3.93	1.43					0.94
Competence	4.73	1.15					0.86
Social distance	2.18	1.35					0.85
Covariates
Arab-Muslim acquaintance	0.46	0.50	0.65	0.48	0.04	0.49
African American acquaintance	0.83	0.38	0.88	0.32	0.81	0.39
Sex (female)	0.71	0.46	0.72	0.45	0.70	0.46
Income	6 (Mdn; “US$50,000-US$59,999”)		8 (Mdn)		5 (Mdn)
Education	4 (Mdn; “associate’s degree”)		5 (Mdn)		3 (Mdn)
Age	44.28	16.90	42.60	15.63	44.83	17.29
News exposure (hr/week)	12.77	18.48	11.11	13.96	13.32	19.76
Race (White)	0.67	0.47	0.86	0.35	0.60	0.49
Race (African American)	0.11	0.31	0.04	0.20	0.14	0.34
Muslim	0.05	0.22	0.03	0.17	0.06	0.23
Ideology (Conservative)	3.75	1.76	3	1.61	4	1.74

A posttest-only experimental design was utilized to test the short-term accessibility effects of exposure to physical and value threats on participants’ perceptions of African Americans and Arab-Muslims. All participants completed the study using the web-based survey program Qualtrics. The survey randomized each participant into one of six conditions: (a) African American/Physical Threat, (b) African American/Value Threat, (c) African American/Control, (d) Arab-Muslim/Physical Threat, (e) Arab-Muslim/Value Threat, and (e) Arab-Muslim/Control. Randomization ensured that the groups were probabilistically equivalent. All participants completed the same posttest questionnaire after reading the stimulus article.

Variables

Warmth

Variable was measured as a composite variable, using an adaptation of a scale designed and validated for use in research related to SCM (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2007) consisting of five items: tolerant, warm, good natured, sincere, and friendly. These items were presented within the format, “As viewed by society, how ________ are [African Americans/Muslims?]” with response options ranging from 1 (“not at all”) to 7 (“extremely”).

Competence

Variable was also measured as a composite variable using items adapted for SCM research (Cuddy et al., 2007) and consisted of six items: competent, confident, independent, intelligent, capable, and competitive. These items were also presented within the format, “As viewed by society, how ________ are [African Americans/Muslims?]” with response options ranging from 1 (“not at all”) to 7 (“extremely”).

Social distance

Assessments of the effect of mediated portrayals on sociobehavioral intentions have often employed scales of social distance. For example, Angermeyer and colleagues (2005) utilized “preferences for social distance [to serve] as proxy for behavioral intentions to distance oneself from people with schizophrenia” (p. 247). Accounts of social distance suggest an inclination to interpersonally approach or avoid some target (Impett, Peplau, & Gable, 2005). As such, it would appear to have great utility with regard to examining the degree to which individuals are inclined to interpersonally approach or avoid a particular social group. Four items were adapted from existing social distance scales (Link et al., 1987; Link, Phelan, Bresnahan, Steuve, & Pescosolido, 1999), including “Could you see yourself renting a room in your home to a [African American/Arab-Muslim] person?” “Could you see yourself choosing to have a [African American/Arab-Muslim] person as a neighbor?” “Could you see yourself working closely, in the future, at a job with someone who is [African American/Arab-Muslim]?” and “Could you see yourself spending an evening socializing with a [African American/Arab-Muslim] person?” All items were measured on a scale from 1 (“definitely not”) to 7 (“definitely yes”) such that higher values reflected a preference for more distance.

Covariates

Demographics and personal characteristics including participant age, gender, education level, income, political ideology, and news consumption were controlled in our analyses. In addition, we constructed binary variables to control for gender (67% female, n = 279), whether participants reported being African American (11%, n = 44), Arab-Muslim (5%, n = 20), or Caucasian-American (67%, n = 265) as well as whether they reported having friendships with African Americans (83%, n = 312) or Arab-Muslims (47%, n = 178). Descriptive and reliability statistics for all variables are available in Table 1.

Manipulation Check

Participants were instructed to list up to five thoughts that came to mind when they thought of either African Americans or Arab-Muslims during the main experiment. These thought-listing data were content analyzed by three coders who were not briefed on the chief objectives of the study. One key variable that was coded was the degree to which participants’ thoughts indicated perceptions that the particular social group posed a physical danger to those around them. This variable was associated with acceptable Krippendorff’s intercoder reliability (α = .78) and was predicted by our stimulus conditions in a manner indicative of the effectiveness of our manipulation on the accessibility of perilous thoughts about our social groups (F(2, 412) = 4.83, p <.01).

Results

The analyses conducted in this section were guided by our hypotheses and research questions. To conduct our primary analyses, we implemented structural equation modeling (SEM) using the Lavaan software developed by Rosseel (2012) for the R statistical package. Our hypothesized model (see Figure 1) yielded a fair fit (e.g., Little, 2013; Schermelleh-Engel, Moosbrugger, & Müller, 2003), with all indices (except for the chi-square statistic) within established cutoff parameters: χ²(259, N = 349) = 493.62, p < .001, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = .051 (.044-.058), comparative fit index (CFI) = .941, normed fit index (NFI) = .928. Chi-square fit statistics are subject to influence of sample size; therefore, Schermelleh-Engel and colleagues (2003) alternatively suggest using the formula of [0 ≤ χ²/df ≤ 2] as an evaluation technique. For our model, this equates to [493.62/259 = 1.91] or good chi-square fit, based on our sample size.

H1 predicted that peril would negatively influence perceptions of a social group’s warmth. As can be seen in Figure 2, perceptions of a social group’s warmth were affected by the conditions such that exposure to articles featuring African Americans and value peril predicted increased perceptions of warmth compared with the control condition—a reversal of what might intuitively be expected. Depictions of African Americans and physical peril in news stories did not have an effect compared with the control condition. Taken together, for the African American news depictions, value peril positively influenced perceptions of warmth, whereas physical peril was associated with no effect. Thus, we found a lack of support for H1 as it relates to African American portrayals. For participants who read articles featuring Arab-Muslims, we found clear support for H1. Exposure to both physical and value peril had a negative effect on perceptions of warmth of Arab-Muslims.

Figure 2.

Measurement model of social group-based peril effects.

H2 predicted that perceptions of a social group’s warmth would be negatively related to preferred social distance. Support was found for this hypothesis. A negative effect of perceptions of warmth on desired social distance was observed, such that the warmer a group was perceived, the less distance participants would place between themselves and members of that social group (see Figure 2). H3 predicted that physical peril would result in lower ratings of a social group’s warmth in comparison with exposure to value peril. A comparison of both peril-types with one another revealed a nearly significant difference in their effect on warmth, in line with H3 (F(1, 201) = 3.84, p = .051; see Table 2). We observed that this main effect was moderated by social group conditions such that the hypothesized effect of peril-type was primarily revealed in the African American social group conditions and muted by the Arab-Muslim group conditions (see Table 3).

Table 2.

Peril-Type Main Effect on Warmth—F(1, 201) = 3.84, p = .051.

Variable	M	SE
Value peril	4.09	(.13)
Physical peril	3.71	(.14)

Table 3.

Peril-Type × Social Group Interaction on Warmth—F(1, 201) = 5.30, p < .05.

Variable	Social group
	African Americans		Arab-Muslims
	M	SE	M	SE
Value peril	4.71	(.18)	3.47	(.19)
Physical peril	3.88	(.18)	3.55	(.22)

With regard to RQ1, no conditions or social groups elicited an effect on perceptions of competence, nor did perceptions of competence influence social inclinations. With regard to RQ2, compared with the control condition and as displayed in Figure 2, each type of threat precipitated a different effect pattern between social groups. This is to say, the effects of value threats for African Americans ran counter the influence of those threats regarding Arab-Muslims. Similarly, there was no correspondence regarding the influence of physical threats for these groups. Furthermore, as mentioned in the paragraph above and indicated in Table 3, there was an interaction effect of peril-type and social group, such that when compared with one another, the two forms of peril had two different influence patterns upon warmth, depending on the social group under consideration.

Discussion

This research examined how exposure to stereotypically threatening mediated representations of two stigmatized groups (African Americans and Arab-Muslims) in news articles affected individuals’ perceptions of warmth and competence of these groups as well as comfort with interpersonal interaction. Fiske and colleagues’ (e.g., Fiske et al., 2002) SCM was utilized as a theoretical framework to explain the potentially unique contributions of perceived stereotype characteristics on one’s proclivity toward social engagement as a function of exposure to peril-based news stories. According to the SCM, warmth and competence are key underlying dimensions of stereotypes. A substantial body of research has indicated that media influence people’s social perceptions (e.g., Morgan & Shanahan, 2010) and that negative stereotyping of minority groups can lead to subsequent negative judgments of them (i.e., perceptions of low warmth and competence). Particularly, when firsthand knowledge of a minority group is limited, individuals report “getting to know” the group through exposure to media portrayals (Busselle & Crandall, 2002). To be sure, African Americans and Arab-Muslims have each had distinct experiences in America in terms of the prejudice and discrimination they encounter, as well as the specific stereotypes which are oriented toward them. Their stories within American history are not identical and yet they are also not entirely unique. Although at different points in time, there may be more fear and antipathy accorded, broadly speaking, to one group relative to the other, in contemporary times, both groups are disproportionately portrayed in unflattering ways (e.g., Dixon & Williams, 2015). A primary aim of this study was to examine how prevalent associations of each of these groups to threat may result in unique social outcomes under congruent contemporary consumption conditions.

This study is associated with several contributions to our current understanding of the impact of threatening media portrayals. Two popular threat forms were compared with regard to the nature of message exposure’s influence on sociobehavioral inclinations. We observed that threat is not universally associated with antisocial group perceptions. In addition, we examined the potential psychological mechanisms which could mediate the influence of media exposure on interaction inclinations. In pursuit of this objective, we produced a conceptual model whereby distinct ways of viewing peril were examined with respect to their effects on subsequent social outcomes. We observed model support via cognitive associations of group warmth. Finally, we undertook this comparison with a focus toward establishing if and how patterns generalize among two social groups frequently characterized by similar threat-types. Our experimental findings suggest that the impact of the threat form depends substantially on the group depicted. Value and physical peril exposure predict unique outcomes in terms of perceptions of warmth and social inclinations with regard to African Americans and Arab-Muslims. Although Arab-Muslims were found to, in general, be associated with less warmth than African Americans among those in the control condition, this was not a significant pattern (F(1, 128) = 1.97, p = .16). In addition, pilot tests revealed that our messages contained each threat-type to a comparable magnitude between each social group. Taken together, the evidence would imply that even when people initially view these groups in similar ways and are exposed to functionally equivalent social group message threats, the negative effect of media can be disproportionate.

Threatening mediated images, in the present case, were operationalized as two different types of status quo disruptions: value peril and physical peril. The former presents a threat to one’s morals or values and lifestyle, whereas the latter presents a threat to one’s physical safety and well-being. African Americans and Arab-Muslims share some similarities in their patterns of portrayal in U.S. news media. Both of these groups are more likely to be unfavorably portrayed as violent and as challenging to majority-group (i.e., White, Christian) well-being (Alsultany, 2012; Dixon & Azocar, 2006). Value peril–focused and physical peril–focused news story equivalents were created to tap into culturally based stigma surrounding African Americans and Arab-Muslims. We found that exposure to news stories portraying African Americans as a value peril resulted in increased perceptions of warmth (but not competence), which in turn decreased desired social distance from African Americans. This runs counter to initial predictions, as it was thought that both forms of peril (value and physical) may result in less favorable perceptions of the stigmatized group. Instead, our value peril news stories predicted perceptions of warmth of African Americans, and less desire for social distance.

Such an outcome, though unexpected, is not entirely without precedent. In the aforementioned study by Stephan and colleagues (2005), average valence ratings were more positive for the value threat than the control condition. Although this effect was not large enough to be significant, it does suggest that peril is not uniformly associated with harsher judgments for all groups. The increased perceptions of warmth from the value peril stories may be explained, at least in part, by the idea that mainstream media present a somewhat fractured picture of African Americans in news versus entertainment media. The increasing favorability of representations of African Americans as desirable characters in television and film (Mastro & Behm-Morawitz, 2005), may be related to more positive perceptions of an African American lifestyle, thus diminishing the threat of a value peril story. Although racism persists, African Americans make up roughly 13% of the national population (U.S. Census, 2017) and are a notable group in the fabric of the American cultural past and present. This status is reflected in popular media. Content analytic work provides evidence that African Americans are more diffused into U.S. entertainment media culture reaching Clark’s media representation stage of respect (Clark, 1969), occupying a relatively wide range of roles today and the largest number of racial/ethnic minority characters on television (Mastro & Behm-Morawitz, 2005; Riles et al., 2018).

According to the SCM, the nonuniform influences on warmth and competence may indicate the possibility of an ambivalent stereotype group (i.e., higher in warmth relative to competence; Fiske et al., 2002) emergent from news stories about African American culture (e.g., music). Such a combination of perceptions has been argued to elicit emotions such as pity “which is directed towards people with negative outcomes whose cause they cannot control” (Cuddy et al., 2008, p. 102). Thus, it may prove beneficial to incorporate additional stigma communication cues (Smith, 2007b)—such as responsibility for adverse situations—as they may offer insight as to why this form of threat was associated with heightened warmth for this social group.

Physical peril stories of African Americans did not influence competence or warmth. While it is certainly possible that the manipulation was just not powerful enough to elicit a reaction, this article was written in the same manner as the Arab-Muslim physical threat article, which did have an impact on perceptions. Both articles referenced a single male social group member who had murdered members of the larger community. Furthermore, pilot testing revealed similar perceptions of perceived physical peril. Thus, it seems more likely that participants were just more readily able to apply the consumed message to more negative evaluative group concerns for Arab-Muslims compared with African Americans.

Despite established evidence in prior research, no African American threat article had a systematically negative effect on any SCM perceptions. Again, it is possible that heightened contact with African Americans via consumption of entertainment media images as well as real-world interactions, relative to other ethnic minorities, could account for this outcome. The contact hypothesis (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006) as well as its mediated counterpart, the parasocial contact hypothesis (Schiappa, Gregg, & Hewes, 2005), provides support for these arguments and would suggest that points of repeated contact (interpersonal and mediated) beyond the news stories used in this study may have diminished the influence of the news stories. Although we controlled for media exposure and real-world contact in our analyses, Table 1 demonstrates a substantial disparity in the percentage of respondents reporting African American or Arab-Muslim acquaintances at 83% and 43%, respectively. The diffusion of exposure to African Americans within our sample may nevertheless have diminished the potential effect of the news stories on their judgments.

In contrast, exposure to both value and physical peril news messages decreased perceptions of warmth of Arab-Muslims, thus increasing desired social distance. In terms of the news environment, the results of this research suggest that different types of peril stories have differential influences on judgments of minority groups. But for Arab-Muslims, regardless of the type of peril, people may see them as a threat. Indeed, in the years following 9/11, Arab-Muslims have routinely been rated as the most feared sociocultural group in America (Brown et al., 2017; Bushman & Bonacci, 2004). Warmth and competence are orthogonal dimensions of stereotyping and, thus, are judged independently from one another. As previously mentioned, a group can be simultaneously perceived as warm and incompetent, or what Fiske and colleagues (2002) describe as an ambivalent stereotype. In the present case, exposure to the Arab-Muslim peril news stories resulted in heightened degradation of warmth compared with competence, a combination that has been suggested to result in some degree of envy or “a righteous indignation of the other’s presumably illegitimate gain” (Cuddy et al., 2008, p. 104). As a result, it is possible that the threats often attributed to Arab-Muslims are perceived more as an accomplishment for the perpetrators, albeit illegitimate, compared with perceptions of the threats perceived to be posed by African Americans. Prior research suggests that Muslim portrayals in the news are often in the context of terrorism or religious fervor (Saleem & Anderson, 2013), thus value and physical peril stories of Arab-Muslims influence people differently in comparison with equivalent stories of African Americans. Moreover, Arab-Muslims remain relatively scarcer in entertainment media and appear more often in news contexts. Our participants may have been more reliant on the news stories when making judgments about Arab-Muslims.

Taken together, our results suggest that although stigmatized groups may share some characterizations of being potentially threatening to dominant culture and to security, the layered attributions of characteristics to these groups intersect to produce unique stereotypes of the groups. Past content analytic work underscores the need to examine the intersection of group identities (e.g., race and gender) in patterns of media portrayals and person perceptions (Behm-Morawitz, 2017). In the present case, the intersection of ethnicity, religion, and nationality likely contributed to the effect of news stories on desire for social interaction with (or distance from) African Americans and Arab-Muslims in unique ways.

Our findings reveal the complicated nature of how various threat-types influence divergent patterns of antipathy under parallel conditions. Furthermore, they suggest important social implications regarding the decision-making to associate specific forms of peril with specific groups. Future research, nevertheless, has many directions. This study utilized a single story for each condition and, therefore, did not allow for the broader generalizability of a multiple-message design (Jackson & Jacobs, 1983). This limitation prevents us from being able to make pronouncements about a broad array of physical and social threat manifestations which could influence interpersonal interaction inclinations for the groups under examination. Future research should replicate these findings while exploring a greater variety of threat manifestations. Moreover, future research should explore additional groups that have, in the past, frequently been associated with physical and value peril (e.g., Hispanic-Americans, homosexuals, and political extremists) to further gain insight with regard to the varied outcomes of congruent threat attributions. One possibility is that further evidence may be observed which suggests that even when a set of behaviors is considered a threat, it is not uniformly perceived as harmful. Such was the case for African American value threats in this study. It is possible that, even though some may consider elements of an outgroup to be likely to disrupt the everyday functioning of the ingroup, people may sometimes look upon certain disruptions of everyday functioning favorably.

Finally, future research would benefit from extending the exploration of media consumption beyond social inclinations to actual interaction behaviors. A rich corpus of research has long-associated media message exposure with causing disaffection toward various social groups. This research has often examined this disaffection in the forms of negative perceptions and disadvantageous policy support pertaining to the social groups depicted. Media have the capacity to bring us together (Riles, Pilny, & Tewksbury, 2018). Additional research is necessary which explores the manner in which various patterns of threat exposure are associated with antisocial behavior and, alternatively, how emphasizing the ways in which we often enhance one another’s well-being could reduce the prevalence of derision and suspicion, amplifying our proclivity for mutual trust (e.g., Riles, Funk, & Davis, 2018). It is critical that researchers increasingly explore the ways in which media exposure can facilitate social cohesion.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) declared receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Richard Wallace Faculty Incentive Grant of the University of Missouri.

Author Biographies

Julius Matthew Riles (PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is an assistant professor at the University of Missouri.

Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz (PhD, University of Arizona) is an associate professor at the University of Missouri.

Haejung Shin (MA, University of Missouri) is a doctoral student at the University of Missouri.

Michelle Funk (PhD, University of Missouri) is a doctoral graduate from the University of Missouri.

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