The U.S. Census Bureau projects that racial minority groups will make up a majority of the U.S. national population in 2042, effectively creating a so-called majority-minority nation. In four ...experiments, we explored how salience of such racial demographic shifts affects White Americans' political-party leanings and expressed political ideology. Study 1 revealed that making California's majority-minority shift salient led politically unaffiliated White Americans to lean more toward the Republican Party and express greater political conservatism. Studies 2, 3a, and 3b revealed that making the changing national racial demographics salient led White Americans (regardless of political affiliation) to endorse conservative policy positions more strongly. Moreover, the results implicate group-status threat as the mechanism underlying these effects. Taken together, this work suggests that the increasing diversity of the nation may engender a widening partisan divide.
The United States is undergoing a demographic shift in which White Americans are predicted to comprise less than 50% of the US population by mid-century. The present research examines how exposure to ...information about this racial shift affects perceptions of the extent to which different racial groups face discrimination. In four experiments, making the growing national racial diversity salient led White Americans to predict that Whites will face increasing discrimination in the future, compared with control information. Conversely, regardless of experimental condition, Whites estimated that discrimination against various racial minority groups will decline. Explorations of several psychological mechanisms potentially underlying the effect of the racial shift information on perceived anti-White discrimination suggested a mediating role of concerns about American culture fundamentally changing. Taken together, these findings suggest that reports about the changing national demographics enhance concerns among Whites that they will be the victims of racial discrimination in the future.
Economic inequality has been on the rise in the United States since the 1980s and by some measures stands at levels not seen since before the Great Depression. Although the strikingly high and rising ...level of economic inequality in the nation has alarmed scholars, pundits, and elected officials alike, research across the social sciences repeatedly concludes that Americans are largely unconcerned about it. Considerable research has documented, for instance, the important role of psychological processes, such as system justification and American Dream ideology, in engendering Americans’ relative insensitivity to economic inequality. The present work offers, and reports experimental tests of, a different perspective—the opportunity model of beliefs about economic inequality. Specifically, two convenience samples (study 1, n = 480; and study 2, n = 1,305) and one representative sample (study 3, n = 1,501) of American adults were exposed to information about rising economic inequality in the United States (or control information) and then asked about their beliefs regarding the roles of structural (e.g., being born wealthy) and individual (e.g., hard work) factors in getting ahead in society (i.e., opportunity beliefs). They then responded to policy questions regarding the roles of business and government actors in reducing economic inequality. Rather than revealing insensitivity to rising inequality, the results suggest that rising economic inequality in contemporary society can spark skepticism about the existence of economic opportunity in society that, in turn, may motivate support for policies designed to redress economic inequality.
We present the race-based disparities in stress and sleep in context model (RDSSC), which argues that racial/ethnic disparities in educational achievement and attainment are partially explained by ...the effects of race-based stressors, such as stereotype threat and perceived discrimination, on psychological and biological responses to stress, which, in turn, impact cognitive functioning and academic performance. Whereas the roles of psychological coping responses, such as devaluation and disidentification, have been theorized in previous work, the present model integrates the roles of biological stress responses, such as changes in stress hormones and sleep hours and quality, to this rich literature. We situate our model of the impact of race-based stress in the broader contexts of other stressors e.g., stressors associated with socioeconomic status (SES), developmental histories of stress, and individual and group differences in access to resources, opportunity and employment structures. Considering both psychological and biological responses to race-based stressors, in social contexts, will yield a more comprehensive understanding of the emergence of academic disparities between Whites and racial/ethnic minorities.
The United States, like many nations, continues to experience rapid growth in its racial minority population and is projected to attain so-called majority-minority status by 2050. Along with these ...demographic changes, staggering racial disparities persist in health, wealth, and overall well-being. In this article, we review the social psychological literature on race and race relations, beginning with the seemingly simple question: What is race? Drawing on research from different fields, we forward a model of race as dynamic, malleable, and socially constructed, shifting across time, place, perceiver, and target. We then use classic theoretical perspectives on intergroup relations to frame and then consider new questions regarding contemporary racial dynamics. We next consider research on racial diversity, focusing on its effects during interpersonal encounters and for groups. We close by highlighting emerging topics that should top the research agenda for the social psychology of race and race relations in the twenty-first century.
Recent Census Bureau projections indicate that racial/ethnic minorities will comprise over 50% of the U.S. population by 2042, effectively creating a so-called “majority–minority” nation. Across four ...experiments, we explore how presenting information about these changing racial demographics influences White Americans’ racial attitudes. Results reveal that exposure to the changing demographics evokes the expression of greater explicit and implicit racial bias. Specifically, Whites exposed to the racial demographic shift information preferred interactions/settings with their own ethnic group over minority ethnic groups; expressed more negative attitudes toward Latinos, Blacks, and Asian Americans; and expressed more automatic pro-White/anti-minority bias. Perceived threat to Whites’ societal status mediated the effects of the racial shift information on explicit racial attitudes. These results suggest that rather than ushering in a more tolerant future, the increasing diversity of the nation may instead yield intergroup hostility. Implications for intergroup relations and media framing of the racial shift are discussed.
Americans misperceive racial economic equality Kraus, Michael W.; Rucker, Julian M.; Richeson, Jennifer A.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
09/2017, Letnik:
114, Številka:
39
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The present research documents the widespread misperception of race-based economic equality in the United States. Across four studies (n = 1,377) sampling White and Black Americans from the top and ...bottom of the national income distribution, participants overestimated progress toward Black–White economic equality, largely driven by estimates of greater current equality than actually exists according to national statistics. Overestimates of current levels of racial economic equality, on average, outstripped reality by roughly 25% and were predicted by greater belief in a just world and social network racial diversity (among Black participants). Whereas high-income White respondents tended to overestimate racial economic equality in the past, Black respondents, on average, underestimated the degree of past racial economic equality. Two follow-up experiments further revealed that making societal racial discrimination salient increased the accuracy of Whites’ estimates of Black–White economic equality, whereas encouraging Whites to anchor their estimates on their own circumstances increased their tendency to overestimate current racial economic equality. Overall, these findings suggest a profound misperception of and unfounded optimism regarding societal race-based economic equality—a misperception that is likely to have any number of important policy implications.
With growing diversity and increased media attention to inequality, it is likely that stigmatized-group members will have increased political influence on social issues affecting other stigmatized ...groups. When might members of different stigmatized groups see commonality in their experiences or disadvantaged status, and when might another stigmatized group be treated solely as an out-group? This article provides an overview of new and important lines of research examining how perceived discrimination may shape intergroup relations among members of different stigmatized groups. Specifically, perceived discrimination is highlighted as a potentially common experience for members of different stigmatized groups that at times elicits coalitional attitudes, but is often solely experienced as a threat to social identity and thus elicits intergroup derogation. The dimensions on which individuals are stigmatized, aspects of their discrimination experiences, and contextual factors are important for predicting whether perceiving discrimination will spur coalition or derogation. This topic is vital for understanding intergroup relations and political behavior in the 21st century.
In four studies, the authors investigated the proposal that in the context of an elite university, individuals from relatively lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds possess a stigmatized ...identity and, as such, experience (a) concerns regarding their academic fit and (b) self-regulatory depletion as a result of managing these concerns. Study 1, a correlational study, revealed the predicted associations between SES, concerns about academic fit, and self-regulatory strength. Results from Studies 2 and 3 suggested that self-presentation involving the academic domain is depleting for lower (but not higher) SES students: After a self-presentation task about academic achievement, lower SES students consumed more candy (Study 2) and exhibited poorer Stroop performance (Study 3) relative to their higher SES peers; in contrast, the groups did not differ after discussing a nonacademic topic (Study 3). Study 4 revealed the potential for eliminating the SES group difference in depletion via a social comparison manipulation. Taken together, these studies support the hypothesis that managing concerns about marginality can have deleterious consequences for self-regulatory resources.
Five
experiments investigated the hypothesis that perspective taking-actively
contemplating others' psychological experiences-attenuates automatic
expressions of racial bias. Across the first 3 ...experiments, participants who
adopted the perspective of a Black target in an initial context subsequently
exhibited more positive automatic interracial evaluations, with changes in
automatic evaluations mediating the effect of perspective taking on more
deliberate interracial evaluations. Furthermore, unlike other bias-reduction
strategies, the interracial positivity resulting from perspective taking was
accompanied by increased salience of racial inequalities (Experiment 3).
Perspective taking also produced stronger approach-oriented action tendencies
toward Blacks (but not Whites; Experiment 4). A final experiment revealed that
face-to-face interactions with perspective takers were rated more positively by
Black interaction partners than were interactions with nonperspective
takers-a relationship that was mediated by perspective takers' increased
approach-oriented nonverbal behaviors (as rated by objective, third-party
observers). These findings indicate that perspective taking can combat automatic
expressions of racial biases without simultaneously decreasing sensitivity to
ongoing racial disparities.
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