Concept and background
Racial priming applies the general priming effect to race. Using the 1988 Willie Horton ad in an experiment, Mendelberg (1997) reported that exposure to images of a Black criminal more strongly linked participants' racial attitudes to crime policy and candidate evaluations. This shows that attitudes such as symbolic racism and racial resentment can be activated by campaigns.
The theory of implicit messages
Mendelberg (2001) argued that, with a norm of racial equality established, explicit racial appeals provoke backlash, whereas implicit messages that evoke race through words or images evade conscious scrutiny and remain effective. Valentino and colleagues (2002) showed that subtle visual cues alone activated racial attitudes in policy judgments, and Gilliam and Iyengar (2000) and Hurwitz and Peffley (2005) reported effects of news images and racialized code words.
Debate and significance
Huber and Lapinski (2006) countered that, in policy experiments, implicit and explicit messages did not differ much in effect. Mendelberg (2008) defended the theory by pointing to design differences and synthesizing the research. The debate shows that campaigns tend to change the weight of existing attitudes rather than create new ones.
FAQ
- What is racial priming in simple terms?
- When ads or news subtly bring race to mind, people's existing racial attitudes play a bigger role in their voting judgments.
- Why are implicit messages thought to be more effective?
- Explicit racial appeals trigger rejection because of equality norms, while subtle messages go unnoticed and work without resistance.
Sources reviewed: 2026-10-26
References
- Mendelberg, T. (1997). Executing Hortons: Racial crime in the 1988 presidential campaign. Public Opinion Quarterly, 61(1), 134–157. Experimental study of the Willie Horton ad.
- Mendelberg, T. (2001). The race card: Campaign strategy, implicit messages, and the norm of equality. Princeton University Press. The book on implicit racial messages.
- Valentino, N. A., Hutchings, V. L., & White, I. K. (2002). Cues that matter: How political ads prime racial attitudes during campaigns. American Political Science Review, 96(1), 75–90. Subtle visual cues prime racial attitudes.
- Gilliam, F. D., Jr., & Iyengar, S. (2000). Prime suspects: The influence of local television news on the viewing public. American Journal of Political Science, 44(3), 560–573. Local news crime images and attitudes.
- Hurwitz, J., & Peffley, M. (2005). Playing the race card in the post–Willie Horton era: The impact of racialized code words on support for punitive crime policy. Public Opinion Quarterly, 69(1), 99–112. Racialized code words and policy support.
- Huber, G. A., & Lapinski, J. S. (2006). The "race card" revisited: Assessing racial priming in policy contests. American Journal of Political Science, 50(2), 421–440. Challenges the implicit–explicit distinction.
- Mendelberg, T. (2008). Racial priming revived. Perspectives on Politics, 6(1), 109–123. Reply and synthesis of the debate.