Aversive Racism
Section snippets
The Nature of Aversive Racism
A critical aspect of the aversive racism framework is the conflict between whites' denial of personal prejudice and underlying unconscious negative feelings toward and beliefs about blacks. Because of current cultural values, most whites have strong convictions concerning fairness, justice, and racial equality. However, because of a range of normal cognitive, motivational, and sociocultural processes that promote intergroup biases, most whites also develop some negative feelings toward or
The Operation of Aversive Racism
The aversive racism framework also helps to identify when discrimination against blacks and other minority groups will or will not occur. Whereas old-fashioned racists exhibit a direct and overt pattern of discrimination, aversive racists' actions may appear more variable and inconsistent. Sometimes they discriminate (manifesting their negative feelings), and sometimes they do not (reflecting their egalitarian beliefs). Our research has provided a framework for understanding this pattern of
Emergency Intervention
Another of our early experiments (Gaertner & Dovidio, 1977) demonstrates how aversive racism can operate in fairly dramatic ways. The scenario for the experiment was inspired by an incident in the mid-1960s in which 38 people witnessed the stabbing of a woman, Kitty Genovese, without a single bystander intervening to help. What accounted for this behavior? Feelings of responsibility play a key role (see Darley & Latané, 1968). If a person witnesses an emergency knowing that he or she is the
Dissociated Attitudes
Beginning with our earliest work on the aversive racism framework, we hypothesized that a dissociation commonly exists between whites' conscious and unconscious racial attitudes and beliefs. Recent research in social cognition has yielded new techniques for assessing unconscious, as well as conscious, attitudes and stereotypes. These techniques thus provide direct evidence about the influence of factors previously only assumed to be involved in aversive racism.
Combating Aversive Racism
When we describe our findings formally, in papers and presentations, and informally, a question often arises, “What can we do about subtle biases, particularly when we do not know for sure whether we have them?” Like a mutating virus, racism may have evolved into different forms that are more difficult not only to recognize but also to combat.
Traditional prejudice-reduction techniques have been concerned with changing conscious attitudes—old-fashioned racism—and obvious expressions of bias.
Summary and Conclusions
This chapter has described the concept of aversive racism, considered the factors contributing to aversive racism, demonstrated empirically how it affects outcomes for blacks and shapes interracial interactions, and explored how it can be combated. Despite apparent consistent improvements in expressed racial attitudes over time, aversive racism continues to exert a subtle but pervasive influence on the lives of black Americans. This bias is expressed in indirect and rationalizable ways that
Acknowledgements
Supported by NIMH Grant MH 48721. We are grateful to Adam Pearson for his helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper.
References (166)
- et al.
Beyond the contact hypothesis: Theoretical perspectives on desegregation
- et al.
Just doing business: Modern racism and obedience to authority as explanations for employment discrimination
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
(2000) - et al.
Nonconscious behavioral confirmation processes: The self-fulfilling consequences of automatic stereotype activation
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
(1997) - et al.
The role of discrepancy-associated affect in prejudice reduction
- et al.
Racial stereotypes: The contents of their cognitive representations
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
(1986) - et al.
The nature of prejudice: Automatic and controlled processes
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
(1997) - et al.
The attribution of attitudes
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
(1967) Focus of attention in minimal intergroup discrimination
British Journal of Social Psychology
(1985)- et al.
The authoritarian personality
(1950) The nature of prejudice
(1954)
Black and blue
New Yorker
An intergroup model of organizational mergers
Intergroup conflict and bias reduction in stepfamilies: A longitudinal examination of intergroup relations processes
Achieving stepfamily harmony: An intergroup relations approach
Journal of Family Psychology
Auto-motives: Preconscious determinants of thought and behavior
Implicit stereotypes and prejudice
An overview of trends in social and economic well-being, by race
Race prejudice as a sense of group position
Pacific Sociological Review
Prejudice as group position: Micro-foundations of a sociological approach to racism and race relations
Journal of Social Issues
Racial attitudes and relations at the close of the twentieth century
The self-regulation of intergroup perception: Mechanisms and consequences of stereotype suppression
Ingroup bias in the minimal intergroup situation: A cognitive-motivational analysis
Psychological Bulletin
Releasing the beast: A study of compliance with orders to use race as a selection criterion
Journal of Social Issues
Ethnocentric and other altruistic motives
Team performance and training in complex environments: Recent findings from applied research
Current Directions in Psychological Science
The justice of affirmative action
A justification-suppression model of the expression and experience of prejudice
Psychological Bulletin
Belief in U.S. government conspiracies against blacks among black and white college students: Powerlessness or system blame?
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Reactions to stigma: The moderating role of justifications
Prejudice and ingroup favoritism in a minimal intergroup situation: Effects of self-esteem
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Stereotypes and prejudice: The automatic and controlled components
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Variables in interracial aggression: Potential ingroup censure
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Variables in interracial aggression: Anonymity, expected retaliation, and a riot
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
The effects of race, status and ability on helping behavior
Social Psychology Quarterly
Race, normative structure, and help-seeking
The effects of sex, status, and ability on helping behavior
Journal of Applied Social Psychology
Changes in the nature and assessment of racial prejudice
Affirmative action, unintentional racial biases, and intergroup relations
Journal of Social Issues
On the nature of contemporary prejudice: The causes, consequences, and challenges of aversive racism
Aversive racism and selection decisions: 1989 and 1999
Psychological Science
Cognitive and motivational bases of bias: The implications of aversive racism for attitudes toward Hispanics
Why can't we just get along? Interpersonal biases and interracial distrust
Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology
Implicit and explicit attitudes: Examination of the relationship between measures of intergroup bias
Reducing contemporary prejudice: Combating explicit and implicit bias at the individual and intergroup level
Implicit and explicit prejudice and interracial interaction
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Racial attitudes and the death penalty
Journal of Applied Social Psychology
The social psychology of prejudice
Who's displaced first? The role of race in layoff decisions
Industrial Relations
Cited by (703)
A multidimensional approach to sexual prejudice: Examining the unique roles of moral disapproval and outgroup antipathy
2024, Personality and Individual DifferencesDelineating the boundaries between genuine cultural change and cultural appropriation in majority-group acculturation
2024, International Journal of Intercultural RelationsHow race influences perceptions of objectivity and hiring preferences
2024, Journal of Experimental Social PsychologyIs the automatic evaluation of individual group members inherently biased by their group membership?
2023, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology