Aversive Racism

• Aversive racists are defined as those who endorse egalitarian values and truly view themselves as non-prejudiced, but still maintain unconscious negative racial attitudes. (Pearson, 2009)
• They are also categorized as being politically liberal, sympathizers of victims of past injustice and discrimination, professors of egalitarian values, but still maintaining unconscious biases. (Pearson, 2009)

• What is Aversive racism?
• Overt vs. implicit bias
• Life consequences of aversive racism
• Legal system
• Selection consequences: job hiring/college
• Medical system
• Where is the bias coming from?
• Aversive racism in children
• Can it be stopped?
• Common in-group identity
• Introducing hypocrisy
• Gaps in Research

Aversive Racism

Outline

Evolution of racism: from overt to subtle

A Two-Dimensional Model That Employs Explicit and Implicit Attitudes to Characterize Prejudice: Son Hing, 2008

Aversive racism and medical interactions with Black patients: A field study: Penner, Dovidio, Gaertner

• Students completed a series of tests to determine their explicit and implicit beliefs.
• Four profiles were created measuring implicit and explicit bias:
• truly low prejudice (low explicit and implicit bias)
• aversive racists (low explicit, high implicit)
• principled conservatives (high explicit, low implicit)
• modern racists (high explicit and high implicit)
• Aversive Racists demonstrated the attributional-ambiguity effect in study 3, recommending the Asian target for hire less in the excuse condition compared with their counterparts in the no-excuse condition

• Statistics show that a large percentage of medical interactions for Black patients are racially discordant.
• 150 Black patients from an inner city medical care facility interacted with several different physicians who were either White, Pakistani, Indian, or Asian.
• Physicians completed measures recording explicit bias and implicit bias using the IAT.
• Patients recorded how friendly and warm the physicians were, whether they consulted the patients in their treatment decisions, and overall patient satisfaction.
• Physicians also recorded how much they felt “on the same team” as their patients are vice versa.
• Results showed that physician-patient interactions were the most negative when the physician was categorized as aversively racist.

Aversive racism affects marginalized minorities particularly in Western culture in many areas of life. What is it, where did it come from, and how can it be stopped?

What is aversive racism?

Gordon Hodson et. al 2005: Aversive Racism in Britain: The use of inadmissible evidence in legal decisions

Aversive racism and selection decisions: 1989 and 1999: Dovidio & Gaertner

Gaps & More

Gaertner & Dovidio

Son Hing, Li, Zanna (2002)

Social norms and the expression of prejudice: The development of aversive racism in childhood

DALILA XAVIER DE FRANÇA1

• 35 male and 55 female white psychology students interpreted legal scenarios and took the Modern Racism Scale.
• Some were included inadmissible DNA evidence, which was crossed out and participants were told to not use that evidence in their interpretations.
• Blacks were given harsher sentences, guilt rating was higher, and likelihood of re offending was higher in the inadmissible evidence condition.
• Justification on non-racial grounds was present. "I didn't want a guilty person to go free."

• White college students were reviewing interview excepts to pick candidates to be hired for a peer counseling program, before this their racial attitudes were assessed.
• Candidates were either well-qualified, ambiguously qualified, and not qualified. Their race was implied using extra-curriculars (BSU or almost exclusively white fraternity)
• They were rated on a series of scales. Provided were extracurriculars, interview excerpt, and personal description.
• Bias manifested most when qualifications were ambiguous. Blacks were referred less than Whites in this condition.
• Qualifications for both races was equated as the same, but race was a factor in how they were considered for the position: shows ingroup favoritism

• Hypothesis: if members of different groups are induced to conceive of themselves as a single group rather than as two completely separate groups, attitudes toward former outgroup members will become more positive through the cognitive and motivational forces that result from ingroup formation—a consequence that could increase the sense of connectedness across group lines.
• brought two 3-person laboratory groups together under conditions designed to vary independently the members’ repre- sentations of the aggregate as one group or two groups (by varying factors such as seating arrangement) and the presence or absence of intergroup cooperation.
• Result: cooperation reduces bias.

• Examined responses of truly non-prejudice and aversive racists to self-awareness of one's own hypocrisy.
• Target group: Asians, Study done in Canada
• Participants had a hypocrisy condition (reflected on situations in which they had acted unfairly toward an Asian person), or a control (no reflection).
• Hypothesis: People aware of violations of their own values (aversive racists) would feel guilt and attempt to compensate by recommending funding for Asian student groups.
• Study was effective: aversive racists reduced their bias.

• The studies in the article used 82 white children in age and gender groups of 5-7 and 8-10 years.
• The children were interviewed and asked to imagine a scenario in which the children imagine black or white children helping them with a building task.
• The targets are allowed to reward the helpers with sweets based on performance.
• The second study had a situation involving children imagining that they were to give money to white or black children in order for them to save up to buy a bicycle.
• In both studies, preference to the white child was observed, with older children using non-racial factors to justify White favoritism in the conditions.

• Skin tone biases, better known as colorism, is an area not explored within aversive racism research.
• Colorism: discrimination based on skin tone.
• Aversive racism between marginalized minorities
• ex: Latinos and Blacks, Blacks and Asians
• African immigrant experience with aversive racism: Africans and African Americans are often grouped together as one in America though their racial identities differ.
• How do they experience and interpret aversive racism?