The rise and fall of the Pacquiao effect: Contrastive priming effects on national identification

• Main Author: Galang, Adrianne John R.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2022
• Subjects: Identification (Psychology); Priming (Psychology); National characteristics, Philippine; Social Psychology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/6264
• Institution: De La Salle University

We demonstrate in a series of field and controlled experiments that assimilative and contrastive priming effects as predicted by the situated inference model (Loersch and Payned 2011) and by social judgment theory (M. Sherif and Hovland 1961) can be observed in the pattern of self-concept change in response to a major cultural event. Study 1 was an ex post facto experiment that used the brief implicit association test (BIAT) to measure national identification in an internet-based sample of Filipinos (N = 93) across a period of time that encompassed one of the matches of Filipino boxing hero Manny Pacquiao. The pattern of scores support the hypothesis that while people who were ambivalent about identifying with Filipino concepts exhibited an assimilation effect (i.e. a slight rise in identification after the fight), people who already highly identified with being Filipino experienced a contrast effect (i.e. a slight drop in identification). Study 2 replicated this result 5 months later with a new sample (N = 22) and ruled out several possible alternative hypotheses. A subsequent controlled experiment (N = 201) supported the hypothesis that the pattern observed in the previous studies is consistent with assimilative and contrastive priming effects. We conclude that research on social identity will need to take into account both assimilative and contrastive priming, and that priming effects can have persistent and large-scale influence even outside the laboratory. Experimental findings in social psychology have demonstrated that cultural icons are effective at priming culturally embedded ways of thinking (Hong, Morris, Chiu, and Benet-Martinez 2000). For example, exposing ethnic Chinese Hong Kong university students to symbols of Chinese culture (e.g. The Great Wall) resulted in a greater tendency to attribute an observed actor's behavior to external forces compared to students who were exposed to an icon of American culture (e.g. The American Flag), and to a control group (Hong, Chiu, and Kung 1997). Aside from the fact that they are instantly recognizable to culture-bearers, they are, from a methodological standpoint, relatively unambiguous as manipulations of cognitive content. Apart from controlled experimental studies however, social psychologists have yet to systematically quantity the real-world effects of cultural icons on the public at large. The few examples include an attempt to quantity the effect of Barack Obama's election to the United States presidency on prejudge against Blacks (Plant, Devine, Cox, Columb, Miller, Goplen, and Peruche 2009), and also a more impressive very large sample study (n = 479,405) by Schmidt and Nosek (2010). Bonanno, and Dekel (2005), studied psychological reactions to the 9/11 attacks on New York City, tracking mental health variables across two time intervals after the event. These studies are similar in terms of general design, since they exploit clearly time-delimited, widely accessible events that rapidly gain prominence as cultural symbols.