Stereotyping effects on consumers' evaluation of advertising: Impact of racial differences between actors and viewers

AbstractThe present experimental study compared the efficacy of two social/psychological theories of stereotyping for explaining the impact of race on consumers' evaluations of advertising.One theory, in-group bias theory, posits that in-group members on the basis of race will evaluate other in-group members more favorably than out-group members. A second theory, polarized appraisal theory, predicts that out-group members will be evaluated more extremely (positively or negatively) than in-group members. A major finding of the present study is that in-group bias theory explains the effect of race in consumers' evaluation of advertising more accurately than does polarized appraisal theory.