Minority Report
Why Preferences in College Admissions May Yield a More-Able Student Body
Dong Li & Dennis Weisman
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Critics of affirmative action policies contend that the elimination of racial preferences in college admissions would lead to a "more-able" student body. We develop a simple model comprised of three classes of college admissions - merit, race and legacy - to show that it is possible that a change in admissions policy that reduces racial preferences leads to a "less-able" student body. The change in admissions policy may serve only to ensure that more admissions are available for "sale" to wealthy alumni through legacy preferences. In other words, when there are multi-dimensional preferences, reducing or eliminating one dimension of preferences may lead to the unforeseen consequence of producing a "less able" student body.
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Cause of Death Affects Racial Classification on Death Certificates
Andrew Noymer, Andrew Penner & Aliya Saperstein
PLoS ONE, January 2011, e15812
Abstract:
Recent research suggests racial classification is responsive to social stereotypes, but how this affects racial classification in national vital statistics is unknown. This study examines whether cause of death influences racial classification on death certificates. We analyze the racial classifications from a nationally representative sample of death certificates and subsequent interviews with the decedents' next of kin and find notable discrepancies between the two racial classifications by cause of death. Cirrhosis decedents are more likely to be recorded as American Indian on their death certificates, and homicide victims are more likely to be recorded as Black; these results remain net of controls for followback survey racial classification, indicating that the relationship we reveal is not simply a restatement of the fact that these causes of death are more prevalent among certain groups. Our findings suggest that seemingly non-racial characteristics, such as cause of death, affect how people are racially perceived by others and thus shape U.S. official statistics.
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The Role of Stigma in Understanding Ethnicity Differences in Authoritarianism
P.J. Henry
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Ethnic minorities often have shown higher mean levels of authoritarianism compared to Whites. However, no theoretical mechanism has been directly tested to explain these ethnicity differences. Using the stigma literature as a framework, two studies are presented that test a novel explanation for this difference, rooted in the devaluing that accompanies being a member of a stigmatized group in society. The results show that, in Study 1, ethnic minorities reported higher levels of authoritarianism in ways that could not be explained by traditional explanations of authoritarianism, including lower income, lower education, or lack of cognitive complexity. However, in Study 2, when participants were given the opportunity to affirm their sense of worth, ethnic minorities did not differ in their mean levels of authoritarianism compared to Whites. These findings are discussed in the context of understanding ethnic minority endorsement of authoritarianism in terms of self-regulatory processes that may be related to their stigmatized condition in society.
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American elementary school children's attitudes about immigrants, immigration, and being an American
Christia Spears Brown
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current study examined 5 to 11-year-old European American children's (N = 90) attitudes regarding immigrants, immigration policy, and what it means to be an American. The majority of children in the sample (from a predominantly European American community) held strong American identities and had distinct ideas about what it means to be an American (namely, one must love America, live by its rules, and be White). Children were in favor of legal immigration as a policy, and although they believed in allowing illegal immigrants to stay if employed, many younger children believed they should go to jail. Many children in the sample were aware of Americans' anti-immigration sentiments, largely attributing it to ethnic/cultural discrimination. Finally, children held negative attitudes about immigrants, particularly Mexican immigrants. These negative attitudes were most evident among children who held a strong, prototypical national in-group identity. In contrast, children did not hold differential attitudes about White and Black Americans.
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Ego Threat and Intergroup Bias: A Test of Motivated-Activation Versus Self-Regulatory Accounts
Thomas Allen & Jeffrey Sherman
Psychological Science, forthcoming
"Fifty-seven non-Black subjects participated in the study...In the ego-threat condition (n = 30), participants were given their test results (all scored 2 or fewer items correct) and were told that the average score was 9...In the control condition (n = 27), participants were told that their tests would be scored at the end of the session. All participants then completed a Black-White Implicit Association Test...Black-unpleasant associations increased significantly in the ego-threat condition compared with the control condition."
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The impact of light skin on prison time for black female offenders
Jill Viglione, Lance Hannon & Robert DeFina
Social Science Journal, January 2011, Pages 250-258
Abstract:
There is a long history of social science research on the importance of race for determining life outcomes. However, there are relatively few social science studies on the importance of skin tone within racial groups. Some recent research has documented the quantifiable advantages associated with having a lighter skin shade, particularly in terms of occupational attainment and earnings among blacks. A handful of studies focusing on black men have also suggested that when authorities perceive offenders as having a lighter skin shade it translates into more lenient criminal justice outcomes. The present analysis extends this line of inquiry by examining how perceived skin tone (assessed by correctional officers) is related to maximum prison sentence and actual time served for over 12,000 black women imprisoned in North Carolina between 1995 and 2009. Controlling for several factors, the results indicated that black women deemed to have a lighter skin tone received more lenient prison sentences and served less time behind bars.
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The effects of attending a diverse college
Peter Hinrichs
Economics of Education Review, April 2011, Pages 332-341
Abstract:
The question of whether there are benefits to be obtained from having a diverse student body is a key issue in the debate over affirmative action. This paper estimates the effects of college racial diversity on post-college earnings, civic behavior, and satisfaction with the college attended. I use the Beginning Postsecondary Students survey, which allows me to control for exposure to racial diversity prior to college. Moreover, I use two techniques from Altonji, Elder, and Taber (2005) to address the issue of selection on unobservables. The first is a sensitivity analysis showing how the coefficient on diversity changes when different values of the correlation are imposed in a system of equations that consists of a selection equation and an outcome equation. The second is estimation based upon an assumption that selection on unobservables equals selection on observables, which, along with the OLS results, gives estimates of bounds on the effect. Single-equation estimates suggest a possible positive effect of diversity on satisfaction with the racial climate at the college attended and a negative effect on community service, but I do not find an effect on other outcomes. Moreover, the estimates are very sensitive to the assumptions made about selection on unobservables.
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The "Obama Effect" and White Racial Attitudes
Susan Welch & Lee Sigelman
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March 2011, Pages 207-220
Abstract:
To what extent did the presidential candidacy and election of Barack Obama affect whites' more general perceptions of African Americans? Responses to survey questions in which respondents were asked to place blacks on scales running from "stupid" to "intelligent" and from "lazy" to "hardworking" revealed that whites' views of blacks' intelligence and work ethic have become somewhat more positive, though whites continued to be rated higher on these attributes than were blacks. The fact that negative stereotypes of blacks were least pronounced among younger whites implies that these stereotypes will continue to fade in the future. These data do not constitute proof positive of an "Obama effect" on whites' racial attitudes, but they are largely consistent with that idea.
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Have Asian American Men Achieved Labor Market Parity with White Men?
ChangHwan Kim & Arthur Sakamoto
American Sociological Review, December 2010, Pages 934-957
Abstract:
We use the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates to investigate earnings differentials between white and Asian American men. We extend prior literature by disaggregating Asian Americans by their immigration status in relation to the U.S. educational system, and by accounting for the effects of field of study and college type. Net of the latter variables and other demographic controls, native-born Asian American men have 8 percent lower earnings than do measurably comparable white men. Our findings show that Asian American men who were schooled entirely overseas have substantial earnings disadvantages, while Asian American men who obtained their highest degree in the United States but completed high school overseas have an intermediate earnings disadvantage. Net of the control variables, including region of residence, only 1.5-generation Asian American men appear to have reached full parity with whites. Most Asian American men lag at least slightly behind white men in terms of full equality in the labor market net of the measured covariates in our statistical models. No one theoretical approach seems able to explain our findings; instead, we suggest the relevance of several perspectives, including the racialized hierarchy view, the demographic heterogeneity approach, and assimilation theory.
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Brian Duncan & Stephen Trejo
Journal of Labor Economics, April 2011, Pages 195-227
Abstract:
We investigate whether selective intermarriage and endogenous ethnic identification interact to hide some of the intergenerational progress achieved by the Mexican-origin population in the United States. In part, we do this by comparing an "objective" indicator of Mexican descent (based on the countries of birth of the respondent and his parents and grandparents) with the standard "subjective" measure of Mexican self-identification (based on the respondent's answer to the Hispanic-origin question). For third-generation Mexican American youth, we show that ethnic attrition is substantial and could produce significant downward bias in standard measures of attainment that rely on ethnic self-identification.
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Contextual Variation in Automatic Evaluative Bias to Racially-Ambiguous Faces
Tiffany Ito et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three studies examined the implicit evaluative associations activated by racially-ambiguous Black-White faces. In the context of both Black and White faces, Study 1 revealed a graded pattern of bias against racially-ambiguous faces that was weaker than the bias to Black faces but stronger than that to White faces. Study 2 showed that significant bias was present when racially-ambiguous faces appeared in the context of only White faces, but not in the context of only Black faces. Study 3 demonstrated that context produces perceptual contrast effects on racial-prototypicality judgments. Racially-ambiguous faces were perceived as more prototypically Black in a White-only than mixed-race context, and less prototypically Black in a Black-only context. Conversely, they were seen as more prototypically White in a Black-only than mixed context, and less prototypically White in a White-only context. The studies suggest that both race-related featural properties within a face (i.e., racial ambiguity) and external contextual factors affect automatic evaluative associations.
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Perspective taking combats automatic expressions of racial bias
Andrew Todd et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
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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Joanne Brebner et al.
Brain Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
The own-race bias (ORB) is a well-documented recognition advantage for own-race (OR) over cross-race (CR) faces, the origin of which remains unclear. In the current study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while Caucasian participants age-categorized Black and White faces which were digitally altered to display either a race congruent or incongruent facial structure. The results of a subsequent surprise memory test indicated that regardless of facial structure participants recognized White faces better than Black faces. Additional analyses revealed that temporally-early ERP components associated with face-specific perceptual processing (N170) and the individuation of facial exemplars (N250) were selectively sensitive to skin color. In addition, the N200 (a component that has been linked to increased attention and depth of encoding afforded to in-group and OR faces) was modulated by color and structure, and correlated with subsequent memory performance. However, the LPP component associated with the cognitive evaluation of perceptual input was influenced by racial differences in facial structure alone. These findings suggest that racial differences in skin color and facial structure are detected during the encoding of unfamiliar faces, and that the categorization of conspecifics as members of our social in-group on the basis of their skin color may be a determining factor in our ability to subsequently remember them.
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Andrew Carton & Ashleigh Shelby Rosette
Academy of Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Approaches related to inference-based processing (e.g., romance-of-leadership theory) would suggest that Black leaders are evaluated positively after success. In contrast, approaches related to recognition-based processing (e.g., leader categorization theory) would suggest that, because of stereotyping, Black leaders are evaluated negatively regardless of their performance. To reconcile this discrepancy, we predicted that evaluators would engage in goal-based stereotyping by perceiving that Black leaders - and not White leaders - fail because of negative leader-based attributes and succeed because of positive non-leader attributes (i.e., compensatory stereotypes). Multi-level analyses of archival data in the context of college football in the United States supported our predictions.
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The Locus of Racial Disadvantage in the Labor Market
Thomas Moore
American Journal of Sociology, November 2010, Pages 909-942
Abstract:
Using a pooled sample constructed from recent installments of the Displaced Workers Survey, this study examines the racial disparities in postdisplacement outcomes while controlling for the predisplacement experience and earnings of individual workers. It finds no racial difference in the reemployment wage, but there is a large racial disparity in the chances of reemployment among workers with equivalent characteristics and experience. This lower reemployment rate of displaced black workers may be due to individual differences in search behavior, but it is also consistent with contemporary accounts of hiring discrimination.
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Laura Giuliano, David Levine & Jonathan Leonard
Journal of Human Resources, January 2011, Pages 26-52
Abstract:
Using data from a large U.S. retail firm, we examine how racial matches between managers and their employees affect rates of employee quits, dismissals, and promotions. We exploit changes in management at hundreds of stores to estimate hazard models with store fixed effects that control for all unobserved differences across store locations. We find a general pattern of own-race bias in that employees usually have better outcomes when they are the same race as their manager. But we do find anomalies in this pattern, particularly when the manager-employee match violates traditional racial hierarchies (for example, nonwhites managing whites).
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Effects of manifest ethnic identification on employment discrimination
Laura Barron, Michelle Hebl & Eden King
Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, January 2011, Pages 23-30
Abstract:
Evidence from recent laboratory experiments suggests that ethnic identification can lead to negative evaluations of ethnic minorities (Kaiser & Pratt-Hyatt, 2009). The current research considers the generalizability of these findings to face-to-face interactions in contexts wherein impression management concerns are salient: the workplace hiring process. In a field experiment, Black, Hispanic, and Irish individuals applied for retail jobs with or without visible display of their ethnic identification. Analysis of indicators of formal (e.g., application offering, interview scheduling) and interpersonal discrimination (e.g., interaction length, nonverbal negativity) suggest store personnel interacting with other-race applicants exhibited greater positivity and longer interactions when applicants displayed ethnic identification than when they did not. The findings suggest that psychologists need to understand not only attitudes or intentions expressed in the lab, but also the behavioral consequences of manifest group identity as they unfold in natural environments.
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Nicholas Wood
Journal of the Early Republic, Spring 2011, Pages 75-106
Abstract:
This essay places the 1838 disfranchisement of black Pennsylvanians in the context of the sectional crisis sparked by the abolitionist mailings and Gag Rule debates in order to understand the motivations of "doughface" politicians ("northern men of southern principles"). Historians have generally understood the process of black disfranchisement in the early republic as a byproduct of the democratization of white suffrage and the hardening of racial thought. However, Pennsylvania does not fit within this traditional model. The disfranchisement of black Pennsylvanians was not accompanied by an expansion of suffrage among whites and racist arguments were insufficient to create a majority in favor of black disfranchisement. Initially the defenders of black suffrage successfully used appeals to the ideals of the American Revolution and arguments about the potential for black uplift to defeat disfranchisement proposals. But as controversy over abolitionism flared in Congress, the national implications of black suffrage became clear. Congressmen and southern newspapers equated black suffrage with radical abolitionism and called on Pennsylvanians to remove the "dark blot" of black suffrage. Doughfaced Pennsylvanians claimed to abhor slavery while portraying abolitionists as fanatics who might unintentionally destroy the Union and arguing that black suffrage should be sacrificed for the greater good of sectional harmony and the perpetuation of the Union. These arguments eventually swayed virtually all Democrats and a significant number of Whigs and Anti-Masons. Thus black disfranchisement in Pennsylvania grew out of the national sectional tension rather than local racism or a byproduct of white suffrage expansion.
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Race, Religion, and Beliefs about Racial Inequality
Marylee Taylor & Stephen Merino
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March 2011, Pages 60-77
Abstract:
This article focuses on stratification beliefs and racial policy opinions among white and black Americans who differ in religious preference. First, it summarizes earlier research on white conservative Protestants and outlines characterizations of Black Protestant church congregants. It then reports patterns of stratification beliefs and racial policy opinions among blacks and whites varying in religious preference who responded to the 1996 through 2006 General Social Surveys. Comparisons across twelve race-by-religion categories did not provide persuasive evidence that white conservative Protestants are uniquely conservative in their stratification beliefs, once background characteristics are controlled, nor was the Black Protestant group distinctive. Compared to blacks, whites were less inclined to structuralist explanations of racial inequality, slightly more inclined to individualist explanations, and consistently more negative about policies and programs to aid blacks. What is more, white Christians were more racially conservative in all these ways than non-Christian whites.
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Nicholas Bowman
Review of Educational Research, March 2011, Pages 29-68
Abstract:
In recent years, American colleges and universities have seen greater diversity among their undergraduate students and greater civic interest and action among these students. In fact, many have argued that meaningful engagement with diversity constitutes an important means of preparing college graduates to participate and flourish in a globalized and rapidly changing society. The current study explores this assertion by conducting a meta-analysis of the relationship between college diversity experiences and civic engagement. The results show that diversity experiences are associated with increases in civic attitudes, behavioral intentions, and behaviors, and the magnitude of this effect is greater for interpersonal interactions with racial diversity than for curricular and cocurricular diversity experiences. The strength of the relationship between diversity and civic engagement also depends on the type of civic outcome and whether changes in that outcome are assessed through self-reported gains versus longitudinal methods.
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Joan Fujimura & Ramya Rajagopalan
Social Studies of Science, February 2011, Pages 5-30
Abstract:
This article presents findings from our ethnographic research on biomedical scientists' studies of human genetic variation and common complex disease. We examine the socio-material work involved in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and discuss whether, how, and when notions of race and ethnicity are or are not used. We analyze how researchers produce simultaneously different kinds of populations and population differences. Although many geneticists use race in their analyses, we find some who have invented a statistical genetics method and associated software that they use specifically to avoid using categories of race in their genetic analysis. Their method allows them to operationalize their concept of 'genetic ancestry' without resorting to notions of race and ethnicity. We focus on the construction and implementation of the software's algorithms, and discuss the consequences and implications of the software technology for debates and policies around the use of race in genetics research. We also demonstrate that the production and use of their method involves a dynamic and fluid assemblage of actors in various disciplines responding to disciplinary and sociopolitical contexts and concerns. This assemblage also includes particular discourses on human history and geography as they become entangled with research on genetic markers and disease. We introduce the concept of 'genome geography' to analyze how some researchers studying human genetic variation 'locate' stretches of DNA in different places and times. The concept of genetic ancestry and the practice of genome geography rely on old discourses, but they also incorporate new technologies, infrastructures, and political and scientific commitments. Some of these new technologies provide opportunities to change some of our institutional and cultural forms and frames around notions of difference and similarity. Nevertheless, we also highlight the slipperiness of genome geography and the tenacity of race and race concepts.
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Age and Skin Tone as Predictors of Positive and Negative Racial Attitudes in Hispanic Children
Katie Stokes-Guinan
Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, February 2011, Pages 3-21
Abstract:
Past research suggests that both White children and minority children, including Hispanics, hold pro-White biases. Although doll studies have been a popular way of assessing racial attitudes among children, several methodological issues have made it challenging to interpret the results from these studies. Furthermore, past research has failed to consider the independence of positive and negative attitudes. The present study utilized a revised doll technique to look at racial attitude development in 116 Hispanic children aged 3 to 10. Results contradict past findings, as the vast majority of the children showed no in-group bias (preference for Hispanics over other groups) or out-group bias (preference for other groups over Hispanics). Nonetheless, Hispanic children showed a slight preference for Whites over Blacks and Asians, and racial attitudes differed as a function of age and skin tone. Results from this study suggest that positive and negative attitudes are influenced by different factors.
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Peer pressure against prejudice: A high school field experiment examining social network change
Elizabeth Levy Paluck
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, March 2011, Pages 350-358
Abstract:
Individuals often conform to the intergroup attitudes and behaviors modeled by their peers in a given situation. To what extent does peer influence on intergroup prejudice 1) diffuse across a social network of peers 2) affect attitudes and behavior across time? Student leaders ("Peer Trainers") were trained to confront expressions of intergroup prejudice in five randomly assigned high schools across a period of five months; students recruited to be Peer Trainers in five control schools waited to be trained. Independent surveys of Peer Trainers' social networks reveal that treatment Peer Trainers were significantly more likely than control Trainers to be nominated by peers as students who confront prejudice. Treatment Peer Trainers' tolerant behavior spread to close friends and to acquaintances in their social network; their attitudes spread inconsistently, and only to close friends. Studying peer influence within social networks can improve understanding of social influence, prejudice reduction, and social change.
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Peter Thisted Dinesen
Social Science Research, March 2011, Pages 572-585
Abstract:
Earlier research has indicated a negative relationship between ethnic diversity and trust. Whereas previous analyses have been carried out at the country, city or neighbourhood level, this paper adds to the literature by analyzing the impact of ethnic diversity on generalized trust in others and out-group trust in the primary school context. The question of the impact of ethnic diversity in school on the trust of schoolchildren is addressed by drawing on a unique survey of children with immigrant and native Danish backgrounds, respectively, in the last three grades of primary school in Denmark. The survey design holds several qualities strengthening the potential for drawing inference about the impact of ethnic diversity in school on trust. The results of the analysis do not confirm the negative relationship between ethnic diversity and trust found in earlier research. In the primary school setting, ethnic diversity does not affect generalized trust and even has a positive impact on out-group trust of native Danish pupils (i.e., their trust in immigrants).