Prejudice
Selectively Friending: Racial Stereotypicality and Social Rejection
Michelle Hebl et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three studies show that people whose physical features are seen as more (versus less) racially stereotypical are more vulnerable to social rejection and exclusion from those outside their group. In Study 1, which used an online social networking site, Blacks perceived as more physically stereotypical were found to have fewer non-Black friends, compared to less-stereotypical Blacks. In Study 2, which used an experimental paradigm, requests for friendship made to non-Blacks by more-stereotypical Blacks were more likely to be rejected than those made by less-stereotypical Blacks. Finally, in a college dormitory, people judged to have more (vs. less) racially stereotypical physical features were found to interact less often with outgroup members. This work substantiates a growing body of research demonstrating that people who are perceived as more physically stereotypical of their racial group are particularly vulnerable to discriminatory treatment by outgroup members across a variety of life domains.
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Natalia Flores & Yuen Huo
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two studies investigated the experiences U.S. Asians and Latinos have with national origin identity neglect, which occurs when others fail to recognize distinctions among national origin groups that comprise the shared, pan-ethnic category. Participants considered situations in which another individual (1) failed to acknowledge or (2) appropriately acknowledged their national origin identity. Individuals in the neglect condition reported stronger negative emotions and partner evaluations. Conversely, participants in the recognition condition reported stronger positive emotions and partner evaluations. These effects generalized such that those who experienced neglect rated the partner's ethnic group more negatively. The effects were stronger among those highly identified with their national origin group. Nearly all participants (91%) reported having experienced national origin identity neglect in daily life. These findings suggest that treating members of distinct social groups as interchangeable parts of a broader category, though seemingly benign, can elicit negative emotional responses and adversely affect intergroup relations.
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Price Discrimination in the Housing Market
Patrick Bayer et al.
NBER Working Paper, May 2012
Abstract:
This paper sets out a new research design to test for price discrimination by sellers in the housing market. The design controls carefully for unobserved differences in the quality of neighborhoods and homes purchased by buyers of each race, using novel panel data from over two million repeat-sales housing transactions in four metropolitan areas. The results indicate that black and Hispanic homebuyers pay premiums of around 3 percent on average across the four cities - differences that are not explained by variation in buyer income, wealth or access to credit. The estimated premiums do not vary significantly with the racial composition of the neighborhood or, most strikingly, the race of the seller. This latter result rules out racial prejudice or animosity on the part of sellers as the primary explanation for the estimated premiums.
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Jessica Mange et al.
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Is the same person perceived as more dangerous if the perceiver is induced to think about Arab and Muslim categories versus no category? Using the shooter paradigm, this study investigated the effects of the accessibility of ethnic (Arab) versus religious (Muslim) categories versus no category on spontaneous aggressive responses toward a target with an ambiguous appearance. Results demonstrated that shooting reactions toward armed targets were faster than non-shooting reactions toward unarmed targets, especially if the target was a man. Despite these main effects, participants made faster decisions to shoot an ambiguous armed target if primed with the category Arab or Muslim (versus no category priming). The findings indicate that the mere priming of these social categories is sufficient to facilitate aggressive responses, even if the targets themselves are ambiguous.
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Prejudice in the Lives of Asian Americans
Charles Weaver
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Expressions of prejudice were compared between Asian American and Black, Hispanic, Jewish, and White respondents to social distance and stereotype items on 5 recent nationwide public opinion surveys. There was much prejudice toward Asian Americans. Their prejudice was greatest toward Blacks and Hispanics and least toward Jews and Whites. Among Asian American subgroups, prejudice toward Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites was greatest by Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans; and least by Filipino Americans and Asian Indian Americans. Suggestions are made for further research.
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"Influx": Black Urban Women's Migration to Rural Pennsylvania
Betty McCall
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, July 2012, Pages 200-209
Abstract:
As a direct result of the 1995 welfare reform legislation, some metropolitan areas relocated women on their welfare rolls through a process called "Greyhound therapy." Many of these women ended up in rural areas that were not only unprepared to meet their specific needs but also not receptive to their presence. This article tells the story of these women, who were moved almost two hundred miles from a large Pennsylvania city to a small town in a rural region.
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Adults Scan Own- and Other-Race Faces Differently
Genyue Fu et al.
PLoS ONE, June 2012
Abstract:
It is well established that individuals show an other-race effect (ORE) in face recognition: they recognize own-race faces better than other-race faces. The present study tested the hypothesis that individuals would also scan own- and other-race faces differently. We asked Chinese participants to remember Chinese and Caucasian faces and we tested their memory of the faces over five testing blocks. The participants' eye movements were recorded with the use of an eye tracker. The data were analyzed with an Area of Interest approach using the key AOIs of a face (eyes, nose, and mouth). Also, we used the iMap toolbox to analyze the raw data of participants' fixation on each pixel of the entire face. Results from both types of analyses strongly supported the hypothesis. When viewing target Chinese or Caucasian faces, Chinese participants spent a significantly greater proportion of fixation time on the eyes of other-race Caucasian faces than the eyes of own-race Chinese faces. In contrast, they spent a significantly greater proportion of fixation time on the nose and mouth of Chinese faces than the nose and mouth of Caucasian faces. This pattern of differential fixation, for own- and other-race eyes and nose in particular, was consistent even as participants became increasingly familiar with the target faces of both races. The results could not be explained by the perceptual salience of the Chinese nose or Caucasian eyes because these features were not differentially salient across the races. Our results are discussed in terms of the facial morphological differences between Chinese and Caucasian faces and the enculturation of mutual gaze norms in East Asian cultures.
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Segregation and Poverty Concentration: The Role of Three Segregations
Lincoln Quillian
American Sociological Review, June 2012, Pages 354-379
Abstract:
A key argument of Massey and Denton's (1993) American Apartheid is that racial residential segregation and non-white group poverty rates combine interactively to produce spatially concentrated poverty. Despite a compelling theoretical rationale, empirical tests of this proposition have been negative or mixed. This article develops a formal decomposition model that expands Massey's model of how segregation, group poverty rates, and other spatial conditions combine to form concentrated poverty. The revised decomposition model allows for income effects on cross-race neighborhood residence and interactive combinations of multiple spatial conditions in the formation of concentrated poverty. Applying the model to data reveals that racial segregation and income segregation within race contribute importantly to poverty concentration, as Massey argued. Almost equally important for poverty concentration, however, is the disproportionate poverty of blacks' and Hispanics' other-race neighbors. It is thus more accurate to describe concentrated poverty in minority communities as resulting from three segregations: racial segregation, poverty-status segregation within race, and segregation from high- and middle-income members of other racial groups. The missing interaction Massey expected in empirical tests can be found with proper accounting for the factors in the expanded model.
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Racial Residential Segregation and Rates of Gonorrhea in the United States, 2003-2007
Katie Biello et al.
American Journal of Public Health, July 2012, Pages 1370-1377
Objectives: In the United States, Black persons are disproportionately affected by sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including gonorrhea. Individual behaviors do not fully explain these racial disparities. We explored the association of racial residential segregation with gonorrhea rates among Black persons and hypothesized that specific dimensions of segregation would be associated with gonorrhea rates.
Methods: We used 2003 to 2007 national STI surveillance data and 2000 US Census Bureau data to examine associations of 5 dimensions of racial residential segregation and a composite measure of hypersegregation with gonorrhea rates among Black persons in 257 metropolitan statistical areas, overall and by sex and age. We calculated adjusted rate ratios with generalized estimating equations.
Results: Isolation and unevenness were significantly associated with gonorrhea rates. Centralization was marginally associated with gonorrhea. Isolation was more strongly associated with gonorrhea among the younger age groups. Concentration, clustering, and hypersegregation were not associated with gonorrhea.
Conclusions: Certain dimensions of segregation are important in understanding STI risk among US Black persons. Interventions to reduce sexual risk may need to account for racial residential segregation to maximize effectiveness and reduce existent racial disparities.
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Enrique Neblett & Sierra Carter
Psychosomatic Medicine, June 2012, Pages 509-516
Objective: To examine the protective effects of racial identity and Africentric worldview on the association between racial discrimination and blood pressure (BP).
Methods: Two hundred ten African American young adults completed questionnaires assessing demographic characteristics, prior racial discrimination experiences, racial identity, and Africentric worldview. Resting BP was assessed before and after completion of the study measures.
Results: Racial discrimination was unrelated to BP in the overall sample (systolic BP, p = .444; diastolic BP [DBP], p = .915; mean arterial pressure, p = .774). However, racial identity and Africentric worldview moderated the association between racial discrimination and BP. Racial discrimination was negatively related to DBP for participants who felt that others viewed African Americans less favorably and who endorsed the uniqueness of the African American experience (B = -2.59, standard error [SE] = 1.29, p = .046). These individuals also had the lowest DBP at high levels of racial discrimination. Racial discrimination was positively associated with DBP for individuals with low levels of Africentric orientation (B = 1.43, SE = 0.72, p = .048) but was unrelated to DBP at moderate (B = 0.24, SE = 0.65, p = .718) and high (B = -0.96, SE = 1.01, p = .341) levels of Africentric worldview.
Conclusions: Racial and cultural personal characteristics such as racial identity and Africentric orientation may serve an important protective function for BP in African American young adults.
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Callie Harbin Burt, Ronald Simons & Frederick Gibbons
American Sociological Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Dominant theoretical explanations of racial disparities in criminal offending overlook a key risk factor associated with race: interpersonal racial discrimination. Building on recent studies that analyze race and crime at the micro-level, we specify a social psychological model linking personal experiences with racial discrimination to an increased risk of offending. We add to this model a consideration of an adaptive facet of African American culture: ethnic-racial socialization, and explore whether two forms - cultural socialization and preparation for bias - provide resilience to the criminogenic effects of interpersonal racial discrimination. Using panel data from several hundred African American male youth from the Family and Community Health Study, we find that racial discrimination is positively associated with increased crime in large part by augmenting depression, hostile views of relationships, and disengagement from conventional norms. Results also indicate that preparation for bias significantly reduces the effects of discrimination on crime, primarily by reducing the effects of these social psychological mediators on offending. Cultural socialization has a less influential but beneficial effect. Finally, we show that the more general parenting context within which preparation for bias takes place influences its protective effects.
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Racial Differences in Exposure and Reactivity to Daily Family Stressors
Kelly Cichy, Robert Stawski & David Almeida
Journal of Marriage and Family, June 2012, Pages 572-586
Abstract:
Using data from the National Study of Daily Experiences, the authors examined racial differences in exposure and reactivity to daily stressors involving family members. Respondents included African American and European American adults age 34 to 84 (N = 1,931) who participated in 8 days of daily interviews during which they reported on daily stressors, affect, and physical health symptoms. The results revealed racial similarities in family stressor exposure. Both races were also emotionally reactive to family arguments and family network events (i.e., events that happen to a family member), whereas African Americans were more physically reactive to family arguments. For African Americans, reactivity to family arguments endured; the increased negative affect and physical symptoms associated with family arguments lasted into the next day. The findings provide evidence for racial similarities and differences, suggesting that family relationships are universally stressful, whereas the negative effects of family stressors are more enduring among African Americans.
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Elizabeth Riina & Susan McHale
Journal of Family Issues, July 2012, Pages 851-873
Abstract:
Grounded in a cultural-ecological perspective, the goals of this study were to examine the implications of young adolescents' experiences of racial discrimination for the quality of relationships with mothers and fathers and to test whether sociocultural processes, such as youth ethnic identity and parents' racial socialization strategies, moderated these linkages. Participants were older and younger adolescents in 176 two-parent African American families who completed questionnaires about their discrimination experiences, ethnic identities, and warmth and conflict in their relationships with parents. Mothers and fathers reported on cultural socialization and preparation for bias practices. Consistent with an emotional spillover hypothesis, discrimination was linked to poorer relationship quality with both mothers and fathers. Youth ethnic identity and mothers' racial socialization moderated discrimination-relationship linkages. Findings were consistent with prior research on discrimination and highlight the protective nature of some sociocultural processes for family relationships.
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Clive Lennox
Oxford Economic Papers, July 2012, Pages 395-416
Abstract:
Does contact with ethnic minorities exacerbate or lower the racial prejudice of whites? To provide empirical evidence on this question, I examine the recruitment of members by the British National Party (BNP), which has a long history of supplying hate-creating stories about ethnic minorities. I find that the BNP recruits fewer white members from communities in which: (i) whites interact more frequently with nonwhites, (ii) whites are exposed to greater racial diversity within the nonwhite population, and (iii) there are more mixed-race offspring from white and nonwhite parents. Further tests suggest that these results are not attributable to self-segregation or economic conditions. Overall, there is compelling evidence that contact with ethnic minorities reduces the racial prejudice of whites.
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Krysia Mossakowski
American Behavioral Scientist, May 2012, Pages 728-746
Abstract:
Our knowledge remains limited about why there are large racial/ethnic differences in wealth among the middle class in the United States. Owning a home and having positive net worth (i.e., more assets than debts) are important aspirations for the middle class because they signify wealth. This study uses a social-psychological perspective and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to explore whether the effects of psychological dispositions on these indicators of wealth differ for Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites. Results reveal that having a stronger sense of personal control over life and higher self-esteem significantly increase the odds of achieving positive net worth and homeownership, independent of demographics, educational attainment, current employment, income, and the socioeconomic status of the family of origin. Moreover, interaction effects indicate that the influence of internal locus of control on wealth is stronger for Whites than Blacks. Overall, this study's findings suggest that the journey between social origins and destinations does not simply need socioeconomic resources, but also psychological resources that come from within the self-concept of the individual. The public policy and mental health implications for the Black middle class are discussed.
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Gizelle Anzures et al.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, August 2012, Pages 484-495
Abstract:
Perceptual narrowing in the visual, auditory, and multisensory domains has its developmental origins during infancy. The current study shows that experimentally induced experience can reverse the effects of perceptual narrowing on infants' visual recognition memory of other-race faces. Caucasian 8- to 10-month-olds who could not discriminate between novel and familiarized Asian faces at the beginning of testing were given brief daily experience with Asian female faces in the experimental condition and Caucasian female faces in the control condition. At the end of 3 weeks, only infants who received daily experience with Asian females showed above-chance recognition of novel Asian female and male faces. Furthermore, infants in the experimental condition showed greater efficiency in learning novel Asian females compared with infants in the control condition. Thus, visual experience with a novel stimulus category can reverse the effects of perceptual narrowing during infancy via improved stimulus recognition and encoding.
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Getting slammed: White depictions of race discussions as arenas of violence
Robin DiAngelo & Özlem Sensoy
Race Ethnicity and Education, forthcoming
Abstract:
For many educators who lead cross-racial discussions, creating ‘safe' spaces in which students can express their views is a familiar goal. Yet what constitutes safety is rarely defined or contextualized. In the absence of this contextualization, the goal of safety is most often driven by White participants who complain that they are (or fear being) ‘attacked' in these discussions. This article examines this specific complaint, which we term as the discourse of violence. We draw on data from a facilitated race discussion and identify five key effects of this discourse in cross-racial discussion about race: positions and re-inscribes Whites as racially innocent; positions and re-inscribes people of Color as perpetrators of violence; maintains White solidarity; stabilizes the ideologies of individualism and universalism; re-inscribes the narration of the ideal imagined community. The data reveal that White students draw on violent imagery to position contexts in which race and racism are under discussion as unsafe spaces; as arenas of violence. We argue that the discourse of violence ultimately functions to protect and reproduce White supremacy, specifically in a context in which the goal is to interrupt White supremacy.
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Racialized Authentication: Constructing Representations of the Florida Highwaymen
Amanda Koontz Anthony
Sociological Quarterly, Summer 2012, Pages 394-421
Abstract:
This article explores how art world professionals and cultural publicists construct representations of a group of "rediscovered" black artists, who painted from the end of the Jim Crow era to the present. Examining their writings, statements from interviews, and their interactions with audiences at public events, I show how they represented the artists as both exotic self-taught artists and achievers of the American Dream. I introduce the term "racialized authentication" to frame a branch of racial rhetoric through which the various actors draw from both traditional racial stereotypes and new racism ideology to construct authentic artists. In conclusion, I address how these findings have implications for the integration of contemporary research on race and sociological studies of art worlds.
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Social Patterning of Cumulative Biological Risk by Education and Income Among African Americans
DeMarc Hickson et al.
American Journal of Public Health, July 2012, Pages 1362-1369
Objectives: We examined the social patterning of cumulative dysregulation of multiple systems, or allostatic load, among African Americans adults.
Methods: We examined the cross-sectional associations of socioeconomic status (SES) with summary indices of allostatic load and neuroendocrine, metabolic, autonomic, and immune function components in 4048 Jackson Heart Study participants.
Results: Lower education and income were associated with higher allostatic load scores in African American adults. Patterns were most consistent for the metabolic and immune dimensions, less consistent for the autonomic dimension, and absent for the neuroendocrine dimension among African American women. Associations of SES with the global allostatic load score and the metabolic and immune domains persisted after adjustment for behavioral factors and were stronger for income than for education. There was some evidence that the neuroendocrine dimension was inversely associated with SES after behavioral adjustment in men, but the immune and autonomic components did not show clear dose-response trends, and we observed no associations for the metabolic component.
Conclusions: Findings support our hypothesis that allostatic load is socially patterned in African American women, but this pattern is less consistent in African American men.
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Neighborhood Diversity and Social Identity Complexity: Implications for Intergroup Relations
Katharina Schmid, Miles Hewstone & Ananthi Al Ramiah
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The authors argue that exposure to contextual diversity can prompt more complex, differentiated, and inclusive multiple in-group perceptions, that is, social identity complexity, with positive consequences for intergroup relations. Two unique, large-scale national surveys, involving respondents sampled from neighborhoods of varying degrees of diversity in Germany (Study 1; N = 1,381 drawn from 50 different neighborhoods) and England (Study 2; N = 580 drawn from 192 different neighborhoods), tested the prediction that people living in ethnically diverse neighborhoods would be higher in social identity complexity and, in turn, hold less negative intergroup attitudes. Results confirmed this hypothesis, showing that greater diversity was directly associated with higher social identity complexity (Studies 1 and 2) and indirectly associated with less in-group bias (Studies 1 and 2), and less social distance (Study 2), via social identity complexity. Findings are discussed with regard to their implications for the consequences of diversity for intergroup relations.
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Michael Andreychik & Michael Gill
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present work challenges the idea that implicit evaluative associations with outgroups necessarily provide information about negative or prejudiced attitudes. We argue that the manner in which one explains outgroup status and action shapes whether one's implicit "negative" associations are prejudice-based or empathy-based. Four studies are consistent with this possibility. Study 1 suggests that whereas implicit "negative" associations are predictive of negative explicit attitudes among those who reject external explanations for African American status and action, such implicit "negativity" predicts positive explicit attitudes among those who endorse external explanations. Study 2 provides experimental evidence that the provision of external explanations results in the formation of implicit "negative" associations that are predictive of compassionate responding. Study 3 provides more direct support for the idea that implicit "negative" associations are empathy-based among external explainers by showing that such "negative" associations are positively correlated with a measure of dispositional empathy-proneness. Finally, Study 4 demonstrates that IAT "negativity" is associated with automatic activation of empathy-related associations among those who strongly endorse external explanations. Discussion centers on the importance of considering factors - such as social explanations - that may moderate whether implicit "negativity" is prejudice-based or empathy-based.
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Christina Gamache Martin, Jacqueline Bruce & Philip Fisher
Hormones and Behavior, May 2012, Pages 661-668
Abstract:
Racial/ethnic minorities experience persistent health disparities due in part to their exposure to chronic SES and psychosocial risk. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and its hormonal end product, cortisol, are believed to mediate the associations between chronic stress and poor health. In this study, racial/ethnic differences in diurnal salivary cortisol rhythms in 179 preadolescent youths and the contributing roles of SES risk, psychosocial risk, perceived discrimination, harsh parenting, and parental monitoring were examined. The analyses revealed racial/ethnic differences in diurnal cortisol rhythms, with African Americans having significantly flatter morning-to-evening cortisol slopes than Caucasians and with Latinos having significantly lower evening cortisol levels than Caucasians. Greater psychosocial risk and less parental monitoring were associated with flatter cortisol slopes. Racial/ethnic differences on the cortisol measures persisted when controlling for SES, psychosocial risk, and parenting quality. The need to assess chronic risk across the lifespan and disentangle possible genetic from environmental contributors is discussed.
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Alvin Bernard Tillery & Michell Chresfield
Journal of Black Studies, July 2012, Pages 545-570
Abstract:
This article examines the depiction of first-wave West Indian immigrants to the United States in Black print culture in the early 20th century. The authors conduct a series of content analyses of four newspapers that had wide circulation in the Black community between 1910 and 1940. Each content analysis serves as an empirical test one of four common hypotheses about ethnic differentiation between West Indians and African Americans: (a) the group consciousness hypothesis, (b) the racial nationalism hypothesis, (c) the radical politics hypothesis, and (d) the model minority hypothesis. The authors find very little empirical support for either the group consciousness hypothesis or the racial nationalism hypothesis and find only a modicum of support for the radical politics hypothesis. Finally, the authors find evidence confirming the model minority hypothesis. They also find that the Black press presented an accurate portrayal of the West Indian immigrants' socioeconomic advantages to native-born Blacks.
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The Affective Paradox: An Emotion Regulatory Account of Ethnic Differences in Self-Reported Anger
Nathan Consedine et al.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, July 2012, Pages 723-741
Abstract:
Despite generally more challenging developmental, environmental, economic, health, and social contexts, minority populations in the United States often report a lower frequency of many negative affects. In some views, such findings reflect a reporting or response bias among minority groups. However, an alternate view suggests that reports of negative emotion differ because minorities do not consciously experience certain discrete emotions as frequently. A study of 1,364 women from six ethnic subpopulations tested this thesis using trait anger as an exemplar. As expected, linear regressions demonstrated that while social desirability explained some ethnic variance in anger reports, a measure of repressive coping explained additional variance in trait anger and eliminated ethnic effects; social desirability no longer predicted trait anger once repressive coping was controlled. Results are discussed in terms how of how developmentally oriented, emotion regulation theories may supplement reporting bias conceptualizations of affective differences across ethnic groups. Implications and directions for future research are given.