Pigment
Michael Tesler
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study argues that President Obama's strong association with an issue like health care should polarize public opinion by racial attitudes and race. Consistent with that hypothesis, racial attitudes had a significantly larger impact on health care opinions in fall 2009 than they had in cross-sectional surveys from the past two decades and in panel data collected before Obama became the face of the policy. Moreover, the experiments embedded in one of those reinterview surveys found health care policies were significantly more racialized when attributed to President Obama than they were when these same proposals were framed as President Clinton's 1993 reform efforts. Dozens of media polls from 1993 to 1994 and from 2009 to 2010 are also pooled together to show that with African Americans overwhelmingly supportive of Obama's legislative proposals, the racial divide in health care opinions was 20 percentage points greater in 2009-10 than it was over President Clinton's plan back in 1993-94.
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The hubris penalty: Biased responses to "Celebration" displays of black football players
Erika Richardson & Robert Livingston
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We posit that pride and arrogance are tolerated for high-status group members but are repudiated for low-status group members. Thus, we predict that Blacks, but not Whites, who behave arrogantly will be penalized. Specifically, we investigated the context of penalties against football players for "celebrating" after touchdowns. We propose that such celebrations reflect a racially biased "hubris penalty" because: (1) celebrations are primarily perceived as displays of arrogance (rather than exuberance), and (2) arrogance is penalized for Black but not White players. Three experiments demonstrate that all players who celebrated after touchdowns were perceived as more arrogant than those who did not celebrate. Although celebratory Black and White players were perceived as being equally arrogant, Black players were penalized with lower compensation whereas White players were not. Mediation analyses show that perceived arrogance mediated the effect of celebration on compensation, even when controlling for perceived aggression.
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Emotional Substrates of White Racial Attitudes
Antoine Banks & Nicholas Valentino
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
A steep decline in biologically based racial animus over the past four decades has not led to a softening of opposition to race-conscious policies such as affirmative action. One explanation for this is that a new racial belief system - referred to as symbolic racism or racial resentment - has replaced "old-fashioned racism." Another is that nonracial values such as ideology and a preference for small government now drive policy opinions. Our theory suggests that whereas disgust once accompanied ideas about "biologically inferior" groups, anger has become fused to conservative ideas about race in the contemporary period. As a result, anger now serves as the primary emotional trigger of whites' negative racial attitudes. We experimentally induce disgust, anger, or fear using an apolitical task and find anger is uniquely powerful at boosting opposition to racially redistributive policies among white racial conservatives. Nonracial attitudes such as ideology and small government preference are not activated by any of these negative emotions.
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The Strategic Pursuit of Moral Credentials
Anna Merritt et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Moral credentials establish one's virtue and license one to act in morally disreputable ways with impunity (Monin & Miller, 2001). We propose that when people anticipate doing something morally dubious, they strategically attempt to earn moral credentials. Participants who expected to do something that could appear racist (decline to hire a Black job candidate in Studies 1 and 2, or take a test that might reveal implicit racial bias in Study 3) subsequently sought to establish non-racist credentials (by expressing greater racial sensitivity in Studies 1 and 2, or by exaggerating how favorably they perceived a Black job candidate in Study 3). Consistent with prior research, a follow-up study revealed that the opportunity to establish such credentials subsequently licensed participants to express more favorable attitudes towards a White versus a Black individual. We argue that strategically pursuing moral credentials allows individuals to manage attributions about their morally dubious behavior.
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An Age Penalty in Racial Preferences
Deborah Small, Devin Pope & Michael Norton
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The authors document an age penalty in racial discrimination: Charitable behavior toward African American children decreases - and negative stereotypical inferences increase - with the age of those children. Using data from an online charity that solicits donations for school projects, the authors found that proposals accompanied by images of older African American students (Grades 6-12) led to fewer donations than proposals with images of younger African Americans (pre-K-Grade 5), with the opposite pattern for proposals with images of multiples races or of all White students. A laboratory experiment demonstrated that negative stereotypical beliefs about African Americans (e.g., that they are lazy) increased with age more for African American children than for White children, a pattern that predicted decreases in giving.
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Alcohol-related cues promote automatic racial bias
Elena Stepanova et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research has shown that alcohol consumption can increase the expression of race bias by impairing control-related processes. The current study tested whether simple exposure to alcohol-related images can also increase bias, but via a different mechanism. Participants viewed magazine ads for either alcoholic or nonalcoholic beverages prior to completing Payne's (2001) Weapons Identification Task (WIT). As predicted, participants primed with alcohol ads exhibited greater race bias in the WIT than participants primed with neutral beverages. Process dissociation analyses indicated that these effects were due to automatic (relative to controlled) processes having a larger influence on behavior among alcohol-primed relative to neutral-primed participants. Structural equation modeling further showed that the alcohol-priming effect was mediated by increases in the influence of automatic associations on behavior. These data suggest an additional pathway by which alcohol can potentially harm inter-racial interactions, even when no beverage is consumed.
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Untangling Pathology: The Moynihan Report and Homosexual Damage, 1965-1975
Kevin Mumford
Journal of Policy History, Winter 2012, Pages 53-73
"Perhaps no other document in modern African American history stimulated more public debate about intimate matters than what is commonly referred to as the Moynihan Report. Leaked to the press in 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan's The Negro Family: The Case For National Action remains accessible through the comprehensive compilation published two years later, The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy, which reprinted it and collected dozens of commentaries on Moynihan's thesis about the damaged nature of the African American family structure. His phrasing was unforgettable and its implications equally disturbing: 'A fundamental fact of American Negro American family life is the often reversed roles of husband and wife,' wrote Moynihan. The 'deterioration of the fabric of Negro society' was at heart the failure of the black family - 'it is the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community at the present time.' According to Moynihan, this little understood problem had worsened since World War II, and the 'tangle of pathology is tightening.' The white family was stable, and the black family was not; in urban centers it was 'approaching complete breakdown.'...Drawing on the Daniel P. Moynihan Papers at the Library of Congress, published social science, popular periodicals and press, my interpretation of the report shifts attention away from its relatively minor discussion of motherhood (which eventually came to occupy public debate) and toward Moynihan's more important, and in some ways fascinating, discussion of black masculinity, which is too often forgotten. I trace the forgetting of Moynihan's masculinity thesis to the disavowal or rejection of the innuendo of homosexuality in his policy language, and present research on the response that shows how homosexuality circled the controversy and how racially inflected homophobia impacted policy matters...By the time Moynihan finished drafting the report, he had synthesized statistical information on patterns of unemployment, social theories of dependency, and family problems in African American communities, and called for social federal welfare programs that were, in effect, highly gendered: geared toward retraining African American men for new jobs, roles, and service in the nation."
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The independent effects of skin tone and facial features on Whites' affective reactions to Blacks
Nao Hagiwara, Deborah Kashy & Joseph Cesario
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research on skin tone and Afrocentric features provides evidence that people use phenotypes (visible physical characteristics) to make inferences about the degree to which stereotypes about the racial group apply to the individual (i.e., to make impressions of others). However, skin tone and Afrocentric features have been confounded in prior research on this topic. The present study examines whether facial features (lip thickness, nose width) have effects on Whites' affective reactions to Black targets, above and beyond the well-documented skin tone effect by experimentally crossing variation in facial features and skin tone. The results showed that both skin tone and facial features independently affected how negatively, as opposed to positively, Whites felt toward Blacks using both implicit and explicit measures. The findings that Whites reacted more negatively toward Blacks with darker skin tone and more prototypical facial features than toward Blacks with lighter skin tone and less prototypical facial features on the explicit measure may indicate that Whites are unaware of the negative effects that Blacks' phenotypes can have on their racial attitudes. The present study demonstrated that subtle facial features, in addition to salient skin tone, also play an important role when predicting Whites' feelings about Blacks. One implication is that it is important to raise people's awareness about the effects that Blacks' phenotypes can have on their attitudes.
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An fMRI Investigation of Racial Paralysis
Michael Norton et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
We explore the existence and underlying neural mechanism of a new norm endorsed by both Black and White Americans for managing interracial interactions: "racial paralysis", the tendency to opt out of decisions involving members of different races. We show that people are more willing to make choices - who is more intelligent? who is more polite? - between two White individuals (same-race decisions) than between a White and a Black individual (cross-race decisions), a tendency which was enhanced when judgments involved traits related to Black stereotypes. We use fMRI to examine the mechanisms underlying racial paralysis, revealing greater recruitment of brain regions implicated in socially appropriate behavior (VMPFC), conflict detection (ACC), deliberative processing (DLPFC), and inhibition (VLPFC). We discuss the impact of racial paralysis on the quality of interracial relations.
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Does the Music Matter? Examining Differential Effects of Music Genre on Support for Ethnic Groups
Heather LaMarre, Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick & Gregory Hoplamazian
Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Winter 2012, Pages 150-167
Abstract:
Using data from a post-test only experiment with random assignment, this article examines whether differing music genres influence socially relevant decisions made by listeners. A sample of White college students was exposed to1 of 3 music genres during an ostensible waiting period, and was then asked to allocate funding to projects for different ethnic groups. Three music conditions - radical White power rock, mainstream rock, and Top 40 pop music - were examined to determine whether differential allocations to ethnic groups would emerge following music exposure. As expected, Top 40 pop music exposure led to equal allocations to the various ethnic groups. After listening to mainstream rock, participants allocated significantly higher budgets to White Americans compared to all other race groups. After listening to radical White power rock music, participants also allocated significantly higher budgets to White Americans, but changes in allocations to ethnic minority groups also emerged. Namely, African Americans and Arab Americans received particularly low funding from participants exposed to radical White power rock music.
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The Man with the Dirty Black Beard: Race, Class, and Schools in the Antebellum South
Harry Watson
Journal of the Early Republic, Spring 2012, Pages 1-26
Abstract:
The problem of poor, degraded white people in the antebellum South presented a problem to both reformers and proponents of slavery. Sharpening the differences of race meant easing those of class, ensuring that public schooling did not always receive widespread support. The cult of white superiority absolved the state of responsibility for social mobility. As better schooling was advocated for religious and civic reasons, wealthy planters determined to avoid taxes joined with their illiterate neighbors in fighting attempts at "improvement" that undermined the slave system based on the notion of black inferiority.
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The New "New Racism" Thesis: Limited Government Values and Race-Conscious Policy Attitudes
Jason Gainous
Journal of Black Studies, April 2012, Pages 251-273
Abstract:
Some contend that Whites' application of values to form opinions about race-conscious policy may constitute a subtle form of racism. Others challenge the new racism thesis, suggesting that racism and values are exclusive in their influence. Proponents of the thesis assert that many Whites' attitudes about such policy are structured by a mix of racism and American individualism. The author suggests that an even more subtle form of racism may exist. Racism may actually be expressed in opposition to big government. The test results presented here indicate that the effects of limited-government values on attitudes about race-conscious policy are conditional on levels of racial prejudice for many Whites, whereas the effects on racially ambiguous social welfare policy attitudes are not. The author contends that these results provide support to the argument that racism still exists and has found a new subtle expression.
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Prejudice Concerns and Race-Based Attentional Bias: New Evidence From Eyetracking
Meghan Bean et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present study used eyetracking methodology to assess whether individuals high in external motivation (EM) to appear nonprejudiced exhibit an early bias in visual attention toward Black faces indicative of social threat perception. Drawing on previous work examining visual attention to socially threatening stimuli, the authors predicted that high-EM participants, but not lower-EM participants, would initially look toward Black faces and then subsequently direct their attention away from these faces. Participants viewed pairs of images, some of which consisted of one White and one Black male face, while a desk-mounted eyetracking camera recorded their eye movements. Results showed that, as predicted, high-EM, but not lower-EM, individuals exhibited patterns of visual attention indicative of social threat perception.
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Decision Making in Eurocentric and Afrocentric Organizations
Trina Daniels
Journal of Black Studies, April 2012, Pages 327-335
Abstract:
This article lays the foundation for how Eurocentric and Afrocentric organizations employ decision-making models differently. An investigation of the archetypes for each organization and its cultural dimensions develops the bases from which to draw conclusions about their decision-making preference. For the purposes here, decision-making includes rational, emotional, political-coalitional, and garbage-can models. This paper also reviews how emotions impact those processes. Findings show that Eurocentric organizations tend toward more rational and political models with strategic use of emotions. Afrocentric organizations deploy more garbage-can or holistic models. When members from Eurocentric organizations employ political models, they aim to please leadership. Members in predominately Afrocentric organizations frown on such behavior. Members from Afrocentric organizations express emotions more freely and with less strategic intent than their counterparts. When members from these cultures encounter each other, having an understanding of these decision-making models may help unpack the negative connotation associated with the concept of cultural baggage.
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Curtis Dunkel
Personality and Individual Differences, April 2012, Pages 759-761
Abstract:
Rushton's Differential K theory posits that a large number of differences between racial groups can be explained by the groups' different life history strategies. Recently self-report measures of life history strategy have been developed. Data aggregated from a number of studies were used to examine the hypothesized difference in life history strategy between Blacks and Whites on these self-report measures. The results were mixed and effect sizes were small. Analyses with one measure supported the hypothesized difference between Blacks and Whites while analyses using a second measure found a difference between Blacks and Whites that was the opposite of that predicted by Differential K theory. In both cases less than two percent of the variance on the measures was explained by ethnicity. The results are discussed in relation to Differential K theory and the measurement of life history strategies.
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A Note on Slavery and the Roots of Inequality
Rodrigo Soares, Juliano Assunção & Tomás Goulart
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We use various secondary historical sources to compile a database containing information on the number of African slaves received by each destination country between the 16th and 19th centuries. We then construct a measure of intensity of African slavery use based on the flow of slaves received divided by historical populations. We also construct a proxy for the use of native slavery. The slavery variables are highly correlated with current levels of inequality. The correlation between our slavery use variables and inequality is stronger than that observed between inequality and development, geographic characteristics, institutional quality, and provision of public goods. The evidence suggests that use of slavery in the historical past may be an important determinant of the levels of inequality observed today across the globe.
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Dyadic interracial interactions: A meta-analysis
Negin Toosi et al.
Psychological Bulletin, January 2012, Pages 1-27
Abstract:
This meta-analysis examined over 40 years of research on interracial interactions by exploring 4 types of outcomes: explicit attitudes toward interaction partners, participants' self-reports of their own emotional state, nonverbal or observed behavior, and objective measures of performance. Data were collected from 108 samples (N = 12,463) comparing dyadic interracial and same-race interactions, predominantly featuring Black and White Americans. Effect sizes were small: Participants in same-race dyads tended to express marginally more positive attitudes about their partners (r = .07), reported feeling less negative affect (r = .10), showed more friendly nonverbal behavior (r = .09), and scored higher on performance measures (r = .07) than those in interracial dyads. Effect sizes also showed substantial heterogeneity, and further analyses indicated that intersectional, contextual, and relational factors moderated these outcomes. For example, when members of a dyad were the same sex, differences between interracial and same-race dyads in negative affect were reduced. Structured interactions led to more egalitarian performance outcomes than did free-form interactions, but the effects of interaction structure on nonverbal behavior depended on participant gender. Furthermore, benefits of intergroup contact were apparent: Differences in emotional state across dyadic racial composition disappeared in longer term interactions, and racial minorities, who often have greater experience with intergroup contact, experienced less negative affect in interracial interactions than did majority group members. Finally, there was a significant historical trend toward more egalitarian outcomes across dyadic racial composition for explicit attitudes and for nonverbal behavior; however, participants' emotional responses and performance have remained consistent.