Tough Race
Do Politicians Racially Discriminate Against Constituents? A Field Experiment on State Legislators
Daniel Butler & David Broockman
American Journal of Political Science, July 2011, Pages 463-477
Abstract:
We use a field experiment to investigate whether race affects how responsive state legislators are to requests for help with registering to vote. In an email sent to each legislator, we randomized whether a putatively black or white alias was used and whether the email signaled the sender's partisan preference. Overall, we find that putatively black requests receive fewer replies. We explore two potential explanations for this discrimination: strategic partisan behavior and the legislators' own race. We find that the putatively black alias continues to be differentially treated even when the emails signal partisanship, indicating that strategic considerations cannot completely explain the observed differential treatment. Further analysis reveals that white legislators of both parties exhibit similar levels of discrimination against the black alias. Minority legislators do the opposite, responding more frequently to the black alias. Implications for the study of race and politics in the United States are discussed.
-------------------------
John Nunley, Mark Owens & Stephen Howard
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study racial discrimination by simultaneously selling identical products on eBay in pairs of auctions posted under different racially identifying names. We detect significant price differences, which are indicative of in-group biases. White names receive higher prices for distinctively white products, and black names receive higher prices for distinctively black products. But price differences only emerge for sellers who have low eBay feedback scores in less competitive markets. Because the price differences dissipate as sellers accumulate credible reputations, the patterns in the data are indicative of statistical discrimination. Overall, the results suggest that mechanisms designed to reduce informational asymmetries and increased competition are both effective at reducing discrimination in online auctions.
-------------------------
Kimberly Barsamian Kahn & Paul Davies
Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, July 2011, Pages 569-580
Abstract:
This article investigates whether within-group differences in perceived phenotypic racial stereotypicality can exacerbate implicit racial stereotyping for Blacks among both ingroup and outgroup members. Two studies with non-Black (Study 1) and Black (Study 2) participants confirmed that high stereotypical (HS) Black targets (i.e., those with darker skin, broader noses and fuller lips) elicited stronger implicit bias in split-second "shoot/don't shoot" situations than low stereotypical (LS) Black targets or White targets. Specifically, a lower shooting criterion was adopted for HS Black targets, indicating a greater willingness to shoot HS Black targets, resulting in more pronounced bias. Results suggest that the perceived phenotypic racial stereotypicality of Black targets can increase the accessibility of stereotypes linking Blacks with danger, which intensifies racial bias. Further, the article provides the first empirical evidence that stereotypicality biases operate at implicit levels among Blacks when evaluating ingroup members. The implications for stereotypicality research and policing are discussed.
-------------------------
Racial Differences in Narcissistic Tendencies
Virgil Zeigler-Hill & Marion Wallace
Journal of Research in Personality, forthcoming
Abstract:
Black individuals have been found to report the highest levels of self-esteem of any racial group in the United States. The purpose of the present research was to examine whether Black individuals also report higher levels of narcissism than White individuals. Study 1 (N = 367) found that Black individuals reported higher levels of narcissism than White individuals even when controlling for gender, self-esteem level, and socially desirable response tendencies. Study 2 (N = 967) and Study 3 (N = 315) found similar results such that Black individuals reported higher levels of narcissism than White individuals on the narcissism measures that captured less pathological facets of this construct. Study 3 also included indicators of psychological adjustment and found that the pathological aspects of narcissism were more strongly associated with maladjustment for Black individuals than for White individuals. The implications of these results for understanding the Black self-esteem advantage are discussed.
-------------------------
Jessica Remedios et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do perceivers combine information about perceptually obvious categories (e.g., Black) with information about perceptually ambiguous categories (e.g., gay) during impression formation? Given that gay stereotypes are activated automatically, we predicted that positive gay stereotypes confer evaluative benefits to Black gay targets, even when perceivers are unaware of targets' sexual orientations. Participants in Study 1 rated faces of White straight men as more likable than White gay men, but rated Black men in the opposite manner: gays were liked more than straights. In Study 2, participants approaching Whites during an approach-avoidance task responded faster to straights than gays, whereas participants approaching Blacks responded faster to gays than straights. These findings highlight the striking extent to which less visible categories, like sexual orientation, subtly influence person perception and determine the explicit and implicit evaluations individuals form about others.
-------------------------
Bill Preference: The Continued Relevance of the Congressional Black Caucus
Marvin King
Politics & Policy, June 2011, Pages 421-439
Abstract:
How does the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) distinguish itself from the Democratic caucus? Will distinguishing itself lead to the CBC introducing legislation that is significantly different from the rest of the Democratic caucus? Will CBC members behave just as other Democrats with similar ideological temperaments? This article seeks to place the role of the contemporary CBC within the larger Democratic caucus. By tapping into bill introduction, I conclude that in most ways, the CBC is remarkably similar to the rest of the Democratic caucus, and in only small ways, is there a demonstrable difference. CBC representation ensures constituents an increased likelihood that their congressperson will introduce legislation related to the government but not in Civil Rights or Community Development. Thus, the value to liberal black voters in electing black representatives to Congress is largely in the liberal voting behavior of black representatives, not the value they bring to bill introduction.
-------------------------
Benjamin Highton
PS: Political Science & Politics, July 2011, Pages 530-535
Abstract:
This article demonstrates that racial prejudice was strongly related to the state-level nonblack vote in the 2008 presidential election, which featured the first African American candidate from a major party, Barack Obama. Additional tests show that while prejudice also explains shifts in the nonblack vote between 2004 and 2008, its influence on voting in the 2000 and 2004 elections was modest at best. Furthermore, there is no relationship between racial attitudes and state-level presidential approval of George Bush in 2008. Taken together, the findings suggest that prejudice does not have a pervasive influence on political behavior and opinion. Instead, the effect appears to have been triggered by the presence of Barack Obama on the ballot. Had there been less prejudice among the American voting public, Obama would likely have won an electoral vote landslide.
-------------------------
Vicarious moral licensing: The influence of others' past moral actions on moral behavior
Maryam Kouchaki
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article investigates the effect of others' prior nonprejudiced behavior on an individual's subsequent behavior. Five studies supported the hypothesis that people are more willing to express prejudiced attitudes when their group members' past behavior has established nonprejudiced credentials. Study 1a showed that participants who were told that their group was more moral than similar other groups were more willing to describe a job as better suited for Whites than for African Americans. In Study 1b, when given information on group members' prior nondiscriminatory behavior (selecting a Hispanic applicant in a prior task), participants subsequently gave more discriminatory ratings to the Hispanic applicant for a position stereotypically suited for majority members (Whites). In Study 2, moral self-concept mediated the effect of others' prior nonprejudiced actions on a participant's subsequent prejudiced behavior such that others' past nonprejudiced actions enhanced the participant's moral self-concept, and this inflated moral self-concept subsequently drove the participant's prejudiced ratings of a Hispanic applicant. In Study 3, the moderating role of identification with the credentialing group was tested. Results showed that participants expressed more prejudiced attitudes toward a Hispanic applicant when they highly identified with the group members behaving in nonprejudiced manner. In Study 4, the credentialing task was dissociated from the participants' own judgmental task, and, in addition, identification with the credentialing group was manipulated rather than measured. Consistent with prior studies, the results showed that participants who first had the opportunity to view an in-group member's nonprejudiced hiring decision were more likely to reject an African American man for a job stereotypically suited for majority members. These studies suggest a vicarious moral licensing effect.
-------------------------
Lisa Legault, Jennifer Gutsell & Michael Inzlicht
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
While prejudice reduction policies and interventions abound, is it possible that some of them result in the precise opposite of their intended effect - an increase in prejudice? We examined this question by exploring the impact of motivationally-based prejudice reduction interventions, and assessed whether certain popular practices might in fact increase prejudice. In two experiments, participants received detailed information on, or were primed with, the goal of prejudice reduction, and this was done by either encouraging autonomous motivation to regulate prejudice or by stressing the societal requirement to control prejudice. Results demonstrated that, ironically, motivating people to reduce prejudice by stressing external control produced more explicit and implicit prejudice than not intervening at all. Conversely, when autonomous motivation to regulate prejudice was induced, participants displayed less explicit and implicit prejudice compared to no-treatment controls. We outline strategies for effectively reducing prejudice and discuss the detrimental consequences of enforcing anti-prejudice standards.
-------------------------
Who We'll Live With: Neighborhood Racial Composition Preferences of Whites, Blacks and Latinos
Valerie Lewis, Michael Emerson & Stephen Klineberg
Social Forces, June 2011, Pages 1385-1407
Abstract:
The debate about racial residential preferences has two open questions. First, are neighborhood racial preferences truly racial, or is race a proxy for socio-economic factors? Second, are in-group or out-group preferences more salient? Using the Houston Area Survey, we employ a factorial experiment to assess the effect of racial composition on neighborhood desirability independent of crime, school quality and property values. We survey whites, blacks and Hispanics to examine in-group vs. out-group preferences. Results show that independent of proxies, whites find neighborhoods less attractive as the proportion black or Hispanic increases; the proportion Asian has no impact. Racial composition has little effect on Hispanics' and blacks' neighborhood preferences. We find no evidence of in-group preferences; rather, results suggest that whites express negative out-group preferences toward black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
-------------------------
Metropolitan-Level Racial Residential Segregation and Black-White Disparities in Hypertension
Kiarri Kershaw et al.
American Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Few studies have examined geographic variation in hypertension disparities, but studies of other health outcomes indicate that racial residential segregation may help to explain these variations. The authors used data from 8,071 black and white participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1999-2006) who were aged 25 years or older to investigate whether black-white hypertension disparities varied by level of metropolitan-level racial residential segregation and whether this was explained by race differences in neighborhood poverty. Racial segregation was measured by using the black isolation index. After adjustment for demographics and individual-level socioeconomic position, blacks had 2.74 times higher odds of hypertension than whites (95% confidence interval (CI): 2.32, 3.25). However, race differences were significantly smaller in low- than in high-segregation areas (Pinteraction = 0.006). Race differences in neighborhood poverty did not explain this heterogeneity, but poverty further modified race disparities: Race differences were largest in segregated, low-poverty areas (odds ratio = 4.14, 95% CI: 3.18, 5.38) and smallest in nonsegregated, high-poverty areas (odds ratio = 1.24, 95% CI: 0.77, 2.01). These findings suggest that racial disparities in hypertension are not invariant and are modified by contextual levels of racial segregation and neighborhood poverty, highlighting the role of environmental factors in the genesis of disparities.
-------------------------
Effect of Suspect Race on Officers' Arrest Decisions
Tammy Rinehart Kochel, David Wilson & Stephen Mastrofski
Criminology, May 2011, Pages 473-512
Abstract:
Many respondents to opinion surveys say that the citizen's race influences how police officers treat the public, yet recent expert social-science panels have declared that research findings are too contradictory to form a conclusion on whether American police are biased against racial minorities. We perform a meta-analysis of quantitative research that estimates the effect of race on the police decision to arrest. Screening nearly 4,500 potential sources, we analyze the results based on 27 independent data sets that generated 40 research reports (both published and unpublished) that permitted an estimate of the effect size of the suspect's race on the probability of arrest. The meta-analysis shows with strong consistency that minority suspects are more likely to be arrested than White suspects. Depending on the method of estimation, the effect size of race varied between 1.32 and 1.52. Converting the race effect size to probabilities shows that compared with the average probability in these studies of a White being arrested (.20), the average probability for a non-White was calculated at .26. The significant race effect persists when taking into account the studies' variations in research methods and the nature of explanatory models used in the studies. Implications for future research are presented.
-------------------------
Framing Matters: Contextual Influences on Interracial Interaction Outcomes
Laura Babbitt & Samuel Sommers
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous studies indicate that interracial interactions frequently have negative outcomes but have typically focused on social contexts. The current studies examined the effect of manipulating interaction context. In Study 1, Black and White participants worked together with instructions that created either a social focus or a task focus. With a task focus, interracial pairs were more consistently synchronized, Black participants showed less executive function depletion, and White participants generally showed reduced implicit bias. Follow-up studies suggested that prejudice concerns help explain these findings: White participants reported fewer concerns about appearing prejudiced when they imagined an interracial interaction with a task focus rather than a social focus (Study 2a), and Black participants reported less vigilance against prejudice in an imagined interracial interaction with a task focus rather than a social focus (Study 2b). Taken together, these studies illustrate the importance of interaction context for the experiences of both Blacks and Whites.
-------------------------
Skin Color, Physical Appearance, and Perceived Discriminatory Treatment
Joni Hersch
Journal of Socio-Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the relation between observer-ratings of attractiveness and skin tone, weight, and height, and provides evidence on whether these physical characteristics affect the likelihood that individuals report discriminatory treatment in a variety of contexts. African Americans with lighter color, and white men with darker color, are rated as more attractive, as are those of normal weight. However, there is little evidence that perceived discriminatory treatment is related to physical characteristics such as weight and height. An exception is for African Americans with lighter skin color who report less discriminatory treatment in daily activities and on the basis of color.
-------------------------
Implicit race bias revisited: On the utility of task context in assessing implicit attitude strength
Laura Scherer & Alan Lambert
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Decades of research have shown that many people harbor implicit attitudes that are positive toward Whites relative to Blacks. With some notable exceptions, these findings are almost always obtained using implicit attitude tasks that assess attitudes toward Whites and Black simultaneously. This makes it difficult to determine whether implicit race bias effects are the result of strong liking for Whites, dislike for Blacks, or both. The present article reports results from a study in which participants' automatic bias towards Blacks and Whites is assessed across multiple evaluative contexts. Results show consistent negative automatic attitudes towards Blacks, but there was considerable variability in participants' attitudes toward Whites. Consistent with the idea that strong attitudes are less contextually sensitive than weaker attitudes (e.g. Krosnick, 1988), it is concluded that participants harbor strong automatic bias against Blacks, but not strong favoritism for Whites. Implications for a context-centered approach to implicit attitude measurement are discussed.
-------------------------
Danice Brown & Tracy Tylka
Journal of Black Psychology, August 2011, Pages 259-285
Abstract:
Research has indicated that racial discrimination places African Americans at risk for psychological distress, in which they experience low levels of well-being. Yet many African Americans are resilient, or have preserved well-being, when faced with this adversity. Using a strength-based approach, this study determined whether racial socialization messages preserved African Americans' resilience when experiencing racial discrimination. Results with a sample of 290 young adult African American college students indicated that overall racial socialization messages, as well as specific messages to appreciate cultural legacy, moderated the relationship between racial discrimination and resilience. As expected, racial discrimination was negatively related to resilience for students who reported fewer racial socialization messages, and racial discrimination was no longer negatively associated with resilience for students reporting a greater number of these messages. Additionally, racial socialization messages predicted unique variance in resilience.
-------------------------
Affirmative action in contest games
Jörg Franke
European Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the incentive effects of affirmative action in competitive environments. Competition is between heterogeneous players in a contest game where heterogeneity might be due to past discrimination. Two policy options are analyzed that tackle the underlying asymmetry: Either it is ignored and the contestants are treated equally, or affirmative action is implemented to neutralize the disadvantages of discriminated players. Comparing the induced effort exertion under the two policies reveals that in a two-player contest game the normative neutralization objective of affirmative action coincides with higher effort exertion. However, in the multi-player contest affirmative action might have adverse incentive effects as the participation of additional weak players detrimentally affects effort incentives of other players. These results also obtain under imperfect information of the contest organizer.
-------------------------
A Deadly Disparity: A Unified Assessment of the Black-White Infant Mortality Gap
Todd Elder, John Goddeeris & Steven Haider
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, June 2011
Abstract:
We provide a unified assessment of a striking disparity in the United States: the differential rate at which white and black infants die. We separate the overall mortality gap into three temporal components - fitness at birth, conditional neonatal mortality, and conditional post-neonatal mortality - and quantify the extent to which each of the components can be predicted using a flexible reweighting method. Almost 90 percent of the overall mortality gap is due to differential fitness at birth, little of which can be predicted by racial differences in background characteristics. The remaining mortality gap stems from conditional post-neonatal mortality differences, nearly all of which can be predicted by background characteristics. The predictability of the mortality gap has declined substantially over the past two decades, largely because the mortality gap among extremely low-fitness infants is increasingly unrelated to background characteristics.
-------------------------
Implicit racial bias and prosocial behavior
Irena Stepanikova, Jennifer Triplett & Brent Simpson
Social Science Research, July 2011, Pages 1186-1195
Abstract:
This paper reports results of an experiment on the relationship between whites' implicit racial bias and prosocial behavior toward blacks. We hypothesized that implicit anti-black bias would lead to less prosocial behavior (generosity with limited monetary resources). Consistent with our hypothesis, the results revealed that implicit anti-black bias, measured by the Implicit Association Test, had a negative effect on generosity toward blacks. This finding extends prior work by showing that implicit racial bias affects non-hypothetical decisions about how to allocate limited monetary resources. We conclude with a discussion of implications and suggestions for future work.
-------------------------
Sharon Wright Austin, Richard Middleton & Rachel Yon
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research examines group consciousness among people of African descent in Miami-Dade County, Florida, and its possible impact on their political participation. Using an original survey of over one thousand respondents, the authors question whether African Americans and black ethnics (Africans, Afro-Caribbean Americans, Afro-Cuban Americans, and Haitians) possess a shared group consciousness and, if so, why. Second, does group consciousness or socioeconomic status most influence the political participation of our respondents? The authors find that these groups have a common consciousness because of their skin color, experiences with discrimination, common interests, similar ideological views, and leadership preferences. They also find that while group consciousness has more of an impact on African American political participation, socioeconomic status more heavily influences black ethnics. Last, factors such as age, gender, partisanship, religion, and second-generation citizenship also affect African American and/or black ethnic political participation.
-------------------------
On the observational implications of taste-based discrimination in racial profiling
William Brock et al.
Journal of Econometrics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper contributes to a growing literature that attempts to determine whether disparities in police stops and searches of potential criminals of different races stems from taste-based discrimination. The key challenge in making this evaluation is that police officers have more information than the econometrician and thus racial disparities in police behavior may result from these unobservable factors rather than discrimination. We develop a general equilibrium model of police and potential criminal behavior that encompasses key models in the literature. We highlight the assumptions needed for existing methods of detecting racial discrimination to hold. In particular, we show that when there are increasing costs to search, existing tests for discrimination can give incorrect results. Given the potential importance of these costs, we then propose some alternate methods for detecting racial bias in police behavior.