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Deliberative versus nondeliberative evaluation of a minority group after viewing an entertainment portrayal

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

Published online on

Abstract

This study tests whether entertainment portrayals of international medical graduate physicians may influence attitudes toward such physicians among television viewers. Given the growing importance of international physicians in U.S. health care delivery, such effects would have the potential to impact significant numbers of patient–physician interactions. From a theoretical and methodological standpoint, this examination extends existing work on entertainment portrayals of often-stigmatized minorities and its impact on minorities for whom stereotypes may be in some respects favorable. An experiment manipulating positive versus negative portrayals of the communicative and professional competence of an Asian Indian female physician on the program ER found that exposure had no effect on conventional, deliberative measures of attitude toward such physicians. However, use of attitude-accessibility measurement suggested that viewers (to the extent that they identified with the narrative character, an Asian Indian physician) who saw the negative portrayal were slower to respond that they liked other Asian Indian female physicians who were presented in photos in a judgment task afterwards—in other words, the negative portrayal inhibited an approach response to other similar physicians. An implication of this finding is that such television portrayals may have the potential to influence affective responses to medical providers from the same demographic as the character portrayed, in ways viewers are likely to be unaware of. Such responses may well influence patient expectations and interactions with such physicians.