Subliminal and Supraliminal Evaluative Conditioning - Research Proposal Example

The Effects of Using Subliminal and Supraliminal Evaluative Conditioning as a Method to Reduce Prejudice Abstract The primary concern of this research is to examine the effects of using subliminal and supraliminal evaluative conditioning as a method to reduce prejudice. Some previous study investigates the relationship between mere exposure and prejudice. The design of this research is based on those previous studies. The predictions as of the outcome of the research are subliminal and supraliminal evaluative conditioning will reduce prejudice. And the subliminal evaluative conditioning is more efficient. The idea is to part all the participants into two groups A and B, in each of the group A and B, divide them into one control group and one study group, during the experiment, display the test materials in different frequency. The dependent variables in this experiment is the measure of prejudice, and the independent variables in this experiment is whether subliminal or supraliminal. Introduction Prejudice is considered to be a psychological behavior affecting many people all over the world. Persons with this personality behavior tend to make judgment or assumptions about other people without a clear concept of their assumptions (Baeyens et al, 1988). In order to curb this menace, there are a number of evaluative conditionings that are used as methods of reducing prejudice. In the current paper, the research will focus on subliminal and supraliminal evaluative conditioning and assert whether both or either of them can be an effective way of reducing prejudice. General question How effective is subliminal and supraliminal evaluative conditioning in reducing prejudice? Hypothesis Subliminal and supraliminal evaluative conditioning will reduce prejudice Literature review Many studies have been carried out in order to investigate effective evaluative conditioning methods that can be used to reduce prejudice. However, not a single study has ever elucidated on the issue (Baeyens et al, 1988). This paper will mainly try to assess whether subliminal evaluative conditioning is more effective than supraliminal evaluative conditioning method. One of the most significant ideas in psychology is that human behavior is in a way governed by both likes and dislikes. For example, in a work place, some people may use all means to avoid those people that they don’t like. Others would vote in their preferred politician based own whether they like their manifestos or no (Baeyens et al, 1988)t. All these constitute emotional responses based on judgments and memories of events, activities and individuals. Although some prejudice behaviors are said to be genetically determined, some studies have proved that prejudice can be influenced and the behavior changed. In this regard, the issue of evaluative conditioning comes in. In particular, evaluative conditioning refers to formation of an attitude towards an object in regard to whether that particular object reflects positively or negatively valence stimuli. In order to effectively analyze effectiveness of subliminal and supraliminal evaluative conditioning, it is important to focus on social psychology theory on attitude formation (Baeyens et al, 1988). On evaluation conditioning theory, evaluative conditioning is considered to occur when an attitude towards stimuli forms due to that object’s paring with either positively or negatively valenced stimuli. When this happens, it is most likely that this can affect evaluation of the object (De Houwer, 2001). In order to effectively reduce prejudice, this paper predicts that subliminal would emerge to more effective than supraliminal. Subliminal has two notions that clearly explain a phenomenon. One of them is subliminal perception. This explains the idea that human behavior is driven by unconscious perception which makes many people uncomfortable. The other notion is subliminal persuasive. This refers to the subliminal presentation of stimuli by people who deliberately try to sway other people’s behavior. In order for individuals with prejudice personality to completely or reduce prejudice, preference and attitudes plays a key role towards this effect (Field, 2000). One of the best and recommended ways of changing attitude and preference is through conscious, propositional learning and reasoning. For example, people who judge others in their work place may start appreciating the when they learn some positive aspects of these people. Another way to change attitudes relies on a more automatic and implicit process which can only happen if one is able to detect co-occurrences of stimuli. This has been evident since the days of Pavlov (1927), where man and other animals have been acknowledged to be susceptible to conditioning. It is believed that stimuli that co-occur with other stimuli that are already liked, more often tends to positively be liked in the process (Field, & Annette 2005). On the other hand, stimuli that co-occur with other stimuli that are already disliked, more often tends to negatively be disliked. Methodology Introduction This section deals with description of the methods that will be used in conducting the research. It is divided into the following subsections: research design, study location, target population, sampling technique, research instruments, data collection procedures, data analysis technique and ethical issues. Research Design As exploratory research is used to generate insights about a situation, its data collection form is usually loose and open-ended, therefore qualitative approach is widely applied for this type of research (Patton, 1990). Observation, interviewing and examination of artifacts (including documents) are the most common research methods of qualitative approach, while within interviewing, focus group discussion and in-depth interview are two most widely used interviewing techniques and forms, which are applied to different research natures and objectives. The in-depth interview strategy usually focuses on a person’s lived experiences and the meaning they make out of the experiences, therefore is suitable for investigating persons with prejudice behavior. Focus group is a fast and effective way to acquire a range of views on a topic, and is suitable for understanding peoples’ perception and attitudes towards other people. However, it must be noted that focus group results come from interactive discussion with fellow participants; therefore individual responses may not be totally independent. As when conducting the focus group and interview, a consent form explaining all relevant study information will be assigned to each interviewee and focus group participant prior to the interview and discussion. Every interviewee and focus group participants will be informed that the video recording would be used solely for analytical purposes and they would not be liable for anything they said during the discussion or interview and their personal information would not be disclosed to any other third party, so that the interviewees and focus group participants’ concerns over anonymisation and confidentiality will eased. Target Population Target population is defined as all members of a real or hypothetical set of people, events or objects to which an investigator wishes to generalize the results of the study (Patton, 1990). This study will essentially targeted psychology students as the principal respondents.    Description of Sampling Procedure and Sample Size Sampling as the process by which a relatively small number of individuals, objects or events are selected and analyzed in order to find out something about the entire population from which it is selected (Patton, 1990). The study will use stratified random sampling. It involves identifying sub groups of the population representative of the percentages of those same subgroups in the general population being studied. Data Collection Instruments and Procedures Data collection is gathering empirical evidence in order to gain new insights about a situation and answer questions that prompt undertaking of the research. Primary and secondary data are the types of data. Primary data is defined as first hand information received from a respondent (Patton, 1990). Data that has been already collected and passed through the statistical process is secondary data. This study needed first hand information, which was received from respondents in the field through interviews, questionnaires and observation guide. Data collection methods involve Operationalising the research design into instruments of data collection with a view to collecting data in order to meet the research objectives. They include interviews, questionnaires, census, sampling, focus groups, observations, Internet and review of documents. Data Analysis Procedure After data collection, editing, coding of similar themes, classifying and tabulating are the processing steps to be used to process the collected data for a better and efficient analysis. Data editing, classification and tabulating are the process of bringing order, structure and meaning of the mass information collected. Data editing will examine the collected new data to detect errors and omissions for correction to ensure accuracy and consistency. Data coding will be assigned symbols to answers to classify or categorize responses. Data will be coded and recorded on tally sheet after the systematic analysis of each individual variable for measuring completeness; occurrence and clarity because row data collected from the field through primary data are never well organized for interpretation. The researcher now needs to understand the collected data and yet they will come in all sorts of shapes and size. Data classification will reduce data into homogeneous groups or attributes for getting meaningful relationships. Tabulation will arrange data into concise and logical order in a procedure referred to as tabulation through columns and rows. The two statistical methods; descriptive and inferential analysis will be applied to measure and determine the relationship that exists among the collected data. Descriptive analysis such as percentages, mean, mode and coefficient of correlation will be used to help to understand and interpret variables, distributions size, and relationship. The package (SPSS) 11.0 for windows is efficient, reliable, and able to sort and provide correlations between variables. Hence, the SPSS will be used for this purpose. Ethical Considerations The researcher has to be careful to avoid causing physical or psychological harm to respondents by asking embarrassing and irrelevant questions, threatening language or making respondents nervous (Patton, 1990). Ethical considerations such as confidentiality, anonymity and avoidance of deception are very important issues in social research. For the purpose of this study, permission will first be sought from relevant authorities and a letter granted to allow carrying out the research. Furthermore, the purpose of the study will be explained to the respondents and assured them of confidentiality of their responses. Conclusion This paper anticipates that the same attitudinal index will be compute as in the previous experiments. The three way interaction between CS type would not be significant of effect of persuasion knowledge activation. Although it is believed that Subliminal would help reduce prejudice, participants with active knowledge would not completely eliminate the evaluative conditioning effect on other people. References: Baeyens, F. et al. (1988), "Once in Contact Always in Contact: Evaluative Conditioning is Resistant to Extinction," Advances in Behaviour Research and Therapy 10 (4), 179-99. De Houwer, Jan (2001), "Contingency Awareness and Evaluative Conditioning: When Will It Be Enough?," Consciousness and Cognition, 10 (December), 550-58. Field, Andy P. (2000), "I Like It, But I'm Not Sure Why: Can Evaluative Conditioning Occur Without Conscious Awareness?," Consciousness and Cognition, 9 (March), 13-36. Field, Andy P. and Annette C. Moore (2005), "Dissociating the Effects of Attention Contingency Awareness on Evaluative Conditioning Effects in the Visual Paradigm," Cognition & Emotion, 19 (February), 217-43.  Patton, M (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications Read More