To directly test the role of exemplar salience, future studies that explicitly activate high- versus low-status Black exemplars before measuring perceptions of racial economic inequality are necessary. Data are reprinted from Kraus, Rucker, and Richeson (2017) under an open-access creative commons license. Some of our initial experimental work also examined motivated reasoning as a causal influence on overestimates of racial economic equality. Two decades of research indicates that people are motivated to rationalize the current structure of society as the optimal solution even when faced with ongoing societal problems (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004) and, on the basis of these same motivated processes, can even devalue people who seek to change the system (Laurin, Shepherd, & Kay, 2010). 3, for instance). To further contextualize these estimates, we examined frequencies of estimates of the Black–White wealth gap when aggregated across the 12 time points. My … Fourth, in our analyses, we adjust for participants’ perceptions of general wealth inequality to account for the type of individual-level sources of noise that are common to economic estimates. This lack of contact reduces the opportunity to acquire accurate perceptions of the lived experiences of people who do not share one’s own status (Pattillo-McCoy, 1999). In the sections that follow, we propose and then examine the evidence regarding several sources of these profound misperceptions, starting with motivational and cognitive processes and closing with group status and broader structural factors. The ones marked * may be different from the article in the profile. Email address for updates. The survey was broadly representative of the United States in terms of region, income, gender, and race (see Supplemental Material available online). Done. We begin with a summary of recent evidence highlighting Americans’ general optimism regarding national progress toward racial economic equality, a pattern that is particularly striking and inaccurate with respect to disparities in wealth. In this prior work, accuracy tended to vary as a function of the domain under examination, with the greatest accuracy for Black–White income equality and the least accuracy for wealth (Kraus et al., 2017). New articles by this author. In three separate studies, for instance, researchers found that mental representations of faces and traits that were more stereotypically and visually White also tended to be associated with high economic standing (Brown-Iannuzzi, Dotsch, Cooley, & Payne, 2017; Kunst, Myhren, & Onyeador, 2018; Lei & Bodenhausen, 2017). In our discussion thus far, we have alluded to one fundamental aspect of the psychology underlying these misperceptions of equality; namely, the desire to see society as fair, just, and merit-based. Sharing links are not available for this article. This particular methodology, under which respondents estimate equality, is not without its limitations (Davidai & Gilovich, 2018; Eriksson & Simpson, 2013; Nero, Swan, Chambers, & Heesacker, 2018; Swan, Chambers, Heesacker, & Nero, 2017; but see also DeBell, 2017). Title. In this article, we argue and offer evidence that these beliefs about the inevitable march toward racial equality, especially in the context of wealth, are overly optimistic and unfounded. My … My … My … When it comes to race relations in the United States, in other words, most Americans hold an unyielding belief in a specific, optimistic narrative regarding racial progress that is robust to counterexamples: that society has come a very long way already and is moving rapidly and perhaps naturally toward full racial equality (Eibach & Ehrlinger, 2006; Hur & Ruttan, 2019). Upload PDF. Indeed, considerable research has revealed positive associations between perceptions of society as fair and higher societal-group status (Brandt, 2013; Malahy, Rubinlicht, & Kaiser, 2009; McCoy & Major, 2007; O’Brien & Major, 2009). In other words, the authors of these contributions and I offer this work as an opening, rather than the conclusion, of a purposeful engagement with the psychological science of racism. New articles by this author. Not surprisingly, we have also observed a robust positive correlation between belief in a just world, a broad individual difference measure that captures the propensity to see society as fair and just, and overestimates of racial economic equality (Kraus et al., 2017). Because it takes wealth to grow wealth, it is especially important to discern the extent to which Americans are (or perhaps are not) aware of the racial wealth gap in contemporary American society. Follow this author . Richeson completed a B.S. Such an analysis is necessary to understand past and contemporary patterns of globalization on the economy: How wealthier countries such as the United States define their borders and divide their global labor continues to perpetuate global economic inequality (Fanon, 1963; Massey, 2008). People high in the belief in societal fairness and/or in political conservatism also tend to think that economic mobility is more likely than is suggested by federal data (Davidai & Gilovich, 2015; Kraus & Tan, 2015)—a belief that also attenuates distress about societal economic inequality and, thus, reduces support for equity-enhancing policies (Day & Fiske, 2017; McCall, Burk, Laperrière, & Richeson, 2017). View or download all the content the society has access to. At the end of that commentary, we called for renewed attention to the study of racism, especially in its more structural, cultural, and explicit forms. A. Richeson), and NSF Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship 1809370 (to I. N. Onyeador). B. The heightened accuracy regarding this group is probably due, at least in part, to the fact that there is actually greater wealth parity between Asian American and White families (compared with that between White and Black families and between White and Latinx families). PDF Restore Delete Forever. Financial literacy can improve accuracy in estimates of the wealth gap because an understanding of how wealth is accumulated underscores how past and contemporary racial discrimination has prevented the accrual of wealth among Black families over time. Scatterplot (with best-fitting regression line in blue and histograms above and to the right of the plot) showing the positive association between belief in a just world and overestimates of Black–White wealth equality aggregated across all time points. My … This "Cited by" count includes citations to the following articles in Scholar. In contrast, federal estimates revealed that progress in each domain had been minimal in some domains and far below participants’ perceptions in all domains. New citations to this author. Indeed, we have a strong and persistent belief that our national disgrace of racial oppression has been overcome, albeit through struggle, and that racial equality has largely already been achieved (Pinkney, 1986; Seamster & Ray, 2018). the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Last, I must acknowledge that despite efforts to ensure otherwise, the special issue is regrettably overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, U.S.-centric. Indeed, research has revealed that motivations can shape which types of Black exemplars are salient for perceivers (Sinclair & Kunda, 1999), and that perceivers flexibly activate the type of Black exemplar that will best satisfy their motivational concerns. Done. PDF Restore Delete Forever. We then explore the motivational and cognitive processes that support and sustain these misperceptions, as well as some of the larger sociocultural and structural factors that underlie them. Hier sollte eine Beschreibung angezeigt werden, diese Seite lässt dies jedoch nicht zu. Email address for updates. Attributing terrorism to mental illness (versus ideology) affects mental representations of race, Booker bill would create federally funded savings account for every child, Motivational accounts of the vicious cycle of social status: An integrative framework using the United States as a case study, Restricted emigration, system inescapability, and defense of the status quo: System-justifying consequences of restricted exit opportunities, Racial assumptions color the mental representation of social class, The construction and preliminary validation of a global belief in a just world scale and the exploratory analysis of the multidimensional belief in a just world scale, Framing inequity safely: Whites’ motivated perceptions of racial privilege, Concern for the in-group and opposition to affirmative action, Ideology and the maintenance of group inequality, Justifying inequality: A cross-temporal investigation of U.S. income disparities and just-world beliefs from 1973 to 2006, Globalization and inequality: Explaining American exceptionalism, Exposure to rising inequality shapes Americans’ beliefs about opportunity and policy support, Priming meritocracy and the psychological justification of inequality, Personal, master, and alternative narratives: An integrative framework for understanding identity development in context, The Marley hypothesis: Denial of racism reflects ignorance of history, Still no compelling evidence that Americans overestimate upward socio-economic mobility rates: Reply to Davidai & Gilovich (2018), Building a better America—One wealth quintile at a time, Understanding White Americans’ perceptions of racism in hurricane Katrina-related events, Group status and feelings of personal entitlement: The roles of social comparison and system-justifying beliefs, The bias of crowds: How implicit bias bridges personal and systemic prejudice, The hard-knock life? Our analyses thus far examined perceptions of equality on a composite index of five economic outcomes, but disaggregating these findings reveals that the misperception of wealth equality is particularly severe (see Kraus et al., 2017). Across three studies, we found that exposure to high-status Asian-American exemplars or subgroups elicited greater overestimates of Asian–White wealth equality compared with exposure to low-status exemplars or subgroups (Kuo et al., 2019). In this analysis, we found no significant association with greater accuracy and identification as Black, Asian, Latinx, or additional category identification. This work suggests something that at first seems inconsistent with what we have found in our research up to this point: that people should become more accurate about racial economic equality to the extent that mental representations of racial minorities become salient. (, Saguy, T., Tausch, N., Dovidio, J. F., Pratto, F. (, Stephens, N. M., Markus, H. R., Fryberg, S. A. The results from the linear-regression analysis described previously suggest the possibility of such a wealth-education intervention strategy (see Table 1); Americans higher in financial literacy were more accurate in their estimates of the Black–White wealth gap even after controlling for demographic characteristics and political beliefs. I have read and accept the terms and conditions, View permissions information for this article. The foundations of motivated reasoning are grounded heavily in cognitive dissonance (Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003; Kunda, 1990), a core social psychological phenomenon that suggests that when individuals are faced with a conflict between two attitudes or an attitude and a behavior, that state is psychologically and affectively uncomfortable, and people are likely to make the easiest changes of attitude to resolve the conflict (Festinger, 1972; Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959). A. This "Cited by" count includes citations to the following articles in Scholar. Economics of the Family Military Family Policy Education Stress Sleep. Additional evidence from this sample further suggests just how misinformed Americans are in terms of their knowledge of what wealth is and how it is accrued. Relation between College Students’ Conservatism and Negative Stereotyp... A Developmental-Science Perspective on Social Inequality, Current Directions in Psychological Science, Alter, A. L., Stern, C., Granot, Y., Balcetis, E. (, Bodenhausen, G. V., Schwarz, N., Bless, H., Wänke, M. (, Bonam, C. M., Vinoadharen, N. D., Coleman, B. R., Salter, P. (, Bricker, J., Dettling, L. J., Henriques, A., Hsu, J. W., Jacobs, L., Moore, K. B., . For more information view the SAGE Journals Sharing page. For these reasons, we conducted a nationally representative survey of American adults to examine perceptions of the racial wealth gap. The study of exemplars suggests that people are indeed flexible in their activation of exemplars of racial groups in the service of momentary motivational concerns and contextual affordances. 4), and critically, respondents were less accurate at higher levels of family education, F(1, 1007) = 58.66, p < .001. I have read and accept the terms and conditions, View permissions information for this article. Study 3 had no Black participants, and this is why the estimates are missing for rightmost categories. In a recent survey conducted by the Pew Foundation, for instance, 14% of White Americans said that being White leads to disadvantages in America relative to being a racial minority (Menasce Horowitz, Brown, & Cox, 2019). The ways in which perceivers access mental representations of racial-minority groups, the motivations that shape which representations are activated, and in what contexts high-status versus low-status exemplars are most likely to be activated are all topics in need of future research. Ph.D. 2000, Harvard University . Indeed, it is possible that the same perceivers are motivated to both overestimate racial equality in the service of narratives of racial progress while also endorsing beliefs that justify the lower-status position of racial minorities, such as the overrepresentation of Black and Latinx Americans in the U.S. carceral system. 2. 3). One fairly straightforward intervention, at least for the quite severe underestimates of the racial wealth gap, may simply involve better informing people of what wealth is and how it is acquired and maintained; that is, making people more financially literate. We took several steps in our work to mitigate these limitations. In sum, we suggest that political messages that attempt to reduce misperceptions of racial economic inequality and drum up support for equity-enhancing policies should not necessarily avoid race, but must also take care to address racial inequality in ways that highlight how to foster the very equality that people believe we have already achieved. Social Media; Email; Share Access; Share this article via social media. Moreover, 13.7% of respondents indicated that Black wealth is higher than White wealth. Richeson earned a Bachelor of Science in psychology from Brown University, and a MA and PhD in social psychology from Harvard University. Members of _ can log in with their society credentials below, Michael W. Kraus, Ivuoma N. Onyeador, Natalie M. Daumeyer, Julian M. Rucker, and Jennifer A. Richeson, This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals surrounding the mean estimates. 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