Selection and Characterization of Cultural Priming Stimuli for the Activation of Spanish and English Cultural Mindsets among Hispanic/Latino Bilinguals in the United States.

Abstract

Cultural priming studies frequently employ non-validated, stereotypical images. Here, we select images to separately evoke two cultural mindsets: Hispanic and US-American. Spanish-English bilinguals identifying as Hispanic/Latino (N=149) rated 50 images online for their cultural and emotional evocation. Based on relative cultural identification, cultural "delegate" (strongly US-American, strongly Hispanic, balanced bicultural) subsamples' ratings were averaged to isolate particularly salient images. Image ratings were compared across respondents' national origins. Ratings of seven selected pairs of content-matched Hispanic and US-American primes were compared across the full sample. High discrimination across cultural mindsets and positive emotion ratings were maintained regardless of various demographic factors. Thus, we provide empirical justification for incorporating these stimuli, individually or as sets, within cultural priming studies among Hispanic/Latino samples.