Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T11:30:17.743Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What Does it Take to Reduce Racial Prejudice in Individual-Level Candidate Evaluations? A Formal Theoretic Perspective*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2014

Arthur Lupia ,
Logan S. Casey ,
Kristyn L. Karl ,
Spencer Piston ,
Timothy J. Ryan  and
Christopher Skovron
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Anti-black prejudice affects how some citizens evaluate black candidates. What does it take to reduce the role of prejudice in these evaluations? Using logical implications of relevant psychological phenomena, this article shows that repeated exposure to counter-stereotypical information is insufficient to reduce evaluative prejudice. Instead, citizens must associate this prejudice with adverse effects for themselves in contexts that induce them to rethink their existing racial beliefs. These findings explain important disagreements in empirical prejudice research, as only some empirical research designs supply the conditions for prejudice reduction predicted here. This study also clarifies why similarly situated citizens react so differently to counter-stereotypical information. In sum, we find that prejudice change is possible, but in a far narrower set of circumstances than many scholars claim.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © The European Political Science Association 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*Arthur Lupia is the Hal R. Varian Collegiate Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, 5700 Haven Hall, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1045 (lupia@umich.edu). Logan S. Casey (lscasey@umich.edu), Kristyn L. Karl (krislm@umich.edu) and Christopher Skovron (cskovron@umich.edu) are graduate students in the Department of Political Science, University of Michigan. Spencer Piston is Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Syracuse University, 100 Eggers Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244-1020 (spiston@maxwell.syr.edu). Timothy J. Ryan is Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina, 361 Hamilton Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3265 (tjryan@umich.edu).

References

Allport, Gordon W. 1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Bullock, John. 2009. ‘Partisan Bias and the Bayesian Ideal in the Study of Public Opinion’. The Journal of Politics 71:1109–1124.Google Scholar
Darmofal, David. 2005. ‘Elite Cues and Citizen Disagreement with Expert Opinion’. Political Research Quarterly 58:381–395.Google Scholar
Devine, Patricia G. 1989. ‘Stereotypes and Prejudice: Their Automatic and Controlled Components’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 56:5–18.Google Scholar
Dienstbier, Richard A. 1970. ‘Positive and Negative Prejudice: Interactions of Prejudice with Race and Social Desirability’. Journal of Personality 38:198–215.Google Scholar
Dovidio, John F., Gaertner, Samuel L., Saguy, TamarHehman, Eric. 2011. ‘Obama's Potential to Transform the Racial Attitudes of White Americans’. In Gregory S. Parks and Matthew W. Hughey (eds), The Obamas and a Post-Racial America. New York: Oxford University Press, 245–262.Google Scholar
Eagly, Alice H.Diekman, Amanda B.. 2005. ‘What is the Problem? Prejudice as an Attitude-in-Context’. In John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, and Laurie A. Rudman (eds), On The Nature of Prejudice, Fifty Years After Allport, 19–35. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Fiske, Susan T. 1998. ‘Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination’. In Daniel T. Gilbert, Susan T. Fiske, and Gardner Lindzey (eds), The Handbook of Social Psychology, 4th ed., 357–411. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Gaertner, Samuel L.Dovidio, John F.. 1986. ‘The Aversive Form of Racism’. In John F. Dovidio and Samuel L. Gaertner (eds), Prejudice, Discrimination, and Racism, 61–89. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Greenwald, Anthony G., Smith, Colin Tucker, Sriram, N., Bar Anan, YoavNosek, Brian A.. 2009. ‘Implicit Race Attitudes Predicted Vote in the 2008 US Presidential Election’. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy 9(1):241–253.Google Scholar
Hajnal, Zoltan L. 2001. ‘White Residents, Black Incumbents, and a Declining Racial Divide’. American Political Science Review 95(3):603–617.Google Scholar
Hajnal, Zoltan L. 2007. Changing Attitudes toward Black Political Leadership. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Jennifer. 2001. ‘Where You Should Stand Depends on What You See: Connections Among Values, Perceptions of Fact, and Political Prescriptions’. In James H. Kuklinski (ed.), Citizens and Politics: Perspectives from Political Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Holland, John H., Holyoak, Keith J., Nisbett, Richard E.Thagard, Paul R.. 1986. Induction: Processes of Inference, Learning, and Discovery. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hunt, Matthew O.Wilson, David C.. 2009. ‘Race/Ethnicity, Perceived Discrimination, and Beliefs about the Meaning of an Obama Presidency’. Du Bois Review 6:1–19.Google Scholar
Hutchings, Vincent L. 2009. ‘Change or More of the Same: Evaluating Racial Policy Preferences in the Obama Era’. Public Opinion Quarterly 73:917–942.Google Scholar
Hutchings, Vincent L.Valentino, Nicholas A.. 2004. ‘The Centrality of Race in American Politics’. Annual Review of Political Science 7:383–408.Google Scholar
Iyengar, ShantoHahn, Kyu H.. 2009. ‘Red Media, Blue Media: Evidence of Ideological Selectivity in Media Use’. Journal of Communication 59:19–39.Google Scholar
Kaiser, Cheryl R., Drury, Benjamin J., Spalding, Kerry E., Cheryan, SapnaO'Brien, Laurie T.. 2009. ‘The Ironic Consequences of Obama's Election: Decreased Support for Social Justice’. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45:556–559.Google Scholar
Kandel, Eric R., Schwartz, James H.Jessell, Thomas M.. 1995. Essentials of Neural Science and Behavior. Norwalk, CT: Appleton and Lange.Google Scholar
Kawakami, Kerry, Dunn, Elizabeth, Karmali, FrancineDovidio, John F.. 2009. ‘Mispredicting Affective and Behavioral Responses to Racism’. Science 323:276–278.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kinder, Donald R. 1998. ‘Opinion and Action in the Realm of Politics’. In Daniel Gilbert, Susan Fiske, and Gardner Linzey (eds), Handbook of Social Psychology, 778–867. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Knowles, Eric D., Lowery, Brian S.Schaumberg, Rebecca L.. 2010. ‘Racial Prejudice Predicts Opposition to Obama and his Health Care Reform Plan’. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46(2):420–423.Google Scholar
Kuklinski, James H.Hurley, Norman L.. 1994. ‘On Hearing and Interpreting Political Messages: A Cautionary Tale of Citizen Cue-Taking’. Journal of Politics 56:729–751.Google Scholar
Kurzban, Robert, Tooby, JohnCosmides, Leda. 2001. ‘Can Race Be Erased? Coalitional Computation and Social Categorization’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 98:15387–15392.Google Scholar
McDermott, Rose. 2004. ‘The Feeling of Rationality: The Meaning of Neuroscientific Advances for Political Science’. Perspectives on Politics 2:691–706.Google Scholar
Mutz, Diana C. 2002. ‘Cross-Cutting Social Networks: Testing Democratic Theory in Practice’. American Political Science Review 96:111–126.Google Scholar
Paluck, Elizabeth LevyGreen, Donald P.. 2009. ‘Prejudice Reduction: What Works? A Review and Assessment of Research and Practice’. Annual Review of Psychology 60:339–367.Google Scholar
Payne, B. Keith, Krosnick, Jon A., Pasek, Josh, Lelkes, Yphtach, Akhtar, OmairTompson, Trevor. 2010. ‘Implicit and Explicit Prejudice in the 2008 American Presidential Election’. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46(2):367–374.Google Scholar
Pettigrew, Thomas F.Tropp, Linda R.. 2006. ‘A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90:751–783.Google Scholar
Piston, Spencer. 2010. ‘How Explicit Racial Prejudice Hurt Obama in the 2008 Election’. Political Behavior 32:431–451.Google Scholar
Prior, Markus. 2007. Post-Broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Richards, ZoëeHewstone, Miles. 2001. ‘Subtyping and Subgrouping: Processes for the Prevention and Promotion of Stereotype Change’. Personality and Social Psychology Review 5:52–73.Google Scholar
Schuman, HowardHarding, John. 1964. ‘Prejudice and the Norm of Rationality’. Sociometry 17:353–371.Google Scholar
Sinclair, LisaKunda, Ziva. 1999. ‘Reactions to a Black Professional: Motivated Inhibition and Activation of Conlficting Stereotypes’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77:885–904.Google Scholar
Sniderman, Paul M.Piazza, Thomas. 2002. Black Pride and Black Prejudice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sniderman, Paul M.Stiglitz, Edward H.. 2008. ‘Race and the Moral Character of the Modern American Experience’. The Forum 6:1–15.Google Scholar
Swain, Carol M. 2002. The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tesler, MichaelSears, David O.. 2010. Obama's Race: The 2008 Election and the Dream of a Post-Racial America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Thernstrom, Abigail. 2008. ‘Great Black Hope: The Reality of President-Elect Obama. An NRO Symposium’. National Review Online, 6 November. Available at http://www.thernstrom.com/pdf/11-6-08%20NRO%20Symposium.pdf, accessed 19 June 2014.Google Scholar
Zajonc, Robert B. 1968. ‘Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 9:1–27.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Lupia Supplementary Material

Appendix

Download Lupia Supplementary Material(File)
File 686.6 KB