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

The 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.