Anxiety and terrorism: automatic stereotypes affect visual attention and recognition memory for White and Middle Eastern faces

Automatic stereotypes and emotional state can affect cognitive processes such as attention, perception, and memory. Two experiments were carried out to investigate whether anxiety and stereotypes of Middle Easterners influence attention and recognition memory in White participants. A dot-probe procedure was used, with White and Middle Eastern faces as stimuli. The results showed that anxious participants who were exposed to terrorism-related words showed a visual bias toward Middle Eastern faces, and were more accurate at recognizing both White and Middle Eastern faces. Non-anxious participants, after exposure to the same primes, showed an attentional bias toward the White faces. Overall, participants were more accurate at recognizing the White faces than the Middle Eastern faces. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.