Validating Whites’ Reactions to the “Racial Shift”

• In Event: Divided by Racial Attitudes? The Changing Politics of White Americans

Abstract

A prominent paradigm demonstrates many White Americans respond negatively to information about their declining population share. But this paradigm considers the racial shift in a single context which also produces a general status threat response across otherwise conceptually distinct outcomes. Existing treatments jointly manipulate concepts like prototypicality threat, realistic threat, collective angst, and general alarm about demographic shifts, undercutting the ability to explain precisely Whites’ responses. We validate the existing intervention by contrasting Whites’ reactions to racial shifts in explicitly cultural or political contexts. If the racial shift produces a general sense of status threat, then we should find comparable attitudinal responses across contexts. We validate this shift by contrasting treatment effects across the 3 manipulations using 4 existing mechanisms, 3 existing dependent variables, and one new dependent variable. We thus clarify an intervention used prominently, with results cited frequently, to understand native majorities’ responses to demographic change.

Authors

• Andrew M. Engelhardt, Stony Brook University

• Nicole Huffman, Stony Brook University

• Veronica Oelerich, Stony Brook University