Publication Type: Paper (prepared oral presentation)
Abstract: When it comes to racial issues, Americans are often suspected of a “split personality” holding different explicit and implicit attitudes. This study goes one step further and suggests that implicit racial attitudes may be split: Implicit word associations (e.g., Fazio et al. 1995, Greenwald et al. 1998) may betray a culturally shared anti-Black bias, even when people experience an implicit sense of closeness toward Blacks.
The study combines a representative RDD-telephone survey (n=1,200) with an online reaction time study (n=1,341) on affirmative action, government aid to Blacks, and reparations for slavery. The telephone survey serves as a baseline for comparison to evaluate the validity of online study. The online study allows comparing explicit racial attitudes to the two types of implicit racial attitudes. Culturally shared implicit word associations are measured using a subliminal priming procedure (Fazio et al. 1995). Implicit closeness to Blacks is conceptualized as cognitive overlap between an individual’s self-concept and that individual’s mental representation of African Americans as a group. It is measured using a timed self-rating task developed by Aron et al. (1991).
The results suggest that implicit closeness toward Blacks plays a powerful and consistent role in predicting support for a broad range of pro-Black policies. In contrast, implicit word associations display a powerful pro-White and anti-Black bias across all racial and ethnic groups. Greater anti-Black word-association bias is associated with greater levels of explicit attitude inconsistency. Political and methodological implications are discussed.