Emerging demographic trends signal that White Americans will soon relinquish their majority status. As Whites’ acclimation to an increasingly diverse society is poised to figure prominently in their adjustment, identifying sources of greater comfort with diversity is important. Three studies (N = 519) revealed evidence that purpose in life bolsters comfort with ethnic diversity among White adults. Specifically, dispositional purpose was positively related to diversity attitudes and attenuated feelings of threat resulting from viewing demographic projections of greater diversity. In addition, when primed experimentally, purpose attenuated participants’ preferences for living in an ethnically homogeneous-White city, relative to a more diverse city when shown maps displaying ethno-demographic information. These effects persisted after controlling for positive affect and perceived connections to ethnic out-groups, suggesting the robust influence of purpose. Potential benefits of situating purpose as a unique resource for navigating an increasingly diverse society are discussed.
AlesinaA.La FerraraE. (2000). Participation in heterogeneous communities. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115, 847-904.
2.
AlesinaA.La FerraraE. (2002). Who trusts others?Journal of Public Economics, 85, 207-234.
3.
AllportG. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
4.
AronA.AronE. N.SmollanD. (1992). Inclusion of other in the self scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 596-612.
5.
BinderJ.ZagefkaH.BrownR.FunkeF.KesslerT.MummendeyA.. . .LeyensJ. P. (2009). Does contact reduce prejudice or does prejudice reduce contact? A longitudinal test of the contact hypothesis amongst majority and minority groups in three European countries. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 843-856.
6.
BundickM. J. (2011). The benefits of reflecting on and discussing purpose in life in emerging adulthood. New Directions for Youth Development, 132, 89-103.
7.
BurrowA. L.HillP. L. (2013). Derailed by diversity? Purpose buffers the relationship between ethnic composition on trains and passenger negative mood. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39, 1610-1619.
8.
CohenG. L.GarciaJ.Purdie-VaughnsV.ApfelN.BrzustoskiP. (2009). Recursive processes in self-affirmation: Intervening to close the minority achievement gap. Science, 324, 400-403.
9.
CostaD.KahnM. (2003). Civic engagement and community heterogeneity. Perspectives on Politics, 1, 103-111.
10.
CraigM. A.RichesonJ. A. (2014). More diverse yet less tolerant? How the increasingly-diverse racial landscape affects White Americans’ racial attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40, 750-761.
11.
DamonW.MenonJ.BronkK. C. (2003). The development of purpose during adolescence. Applied Developmental Sciences, 7, 119-128.
12.
DelheyJ.NewtonK. (2005). Predicting cross-national levels of social trust: Global pattern or Nordic exceptionalism?European Sociological Review, 21, 311-327.
13.
DixonJ.DurrheimK. (2003). Contact and the ecology of racial division: Some varieties of informal segregation. British Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 1-23.
14.
DonnellanM. B.OswaldF. L.BairdB. M.LucasR. E. (2006). The mini-IPIP scales: Tiny-yet-effective measures of the Big Five factors of personality. Psychological Assessment, 18, 192-203.
15.
FossettM.KiecoltK. J. (1989). The relative size of minority populations and White racial attitudes. Social Science Quarterly, 70, 820-835.
16.
FredricksonB. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56, 218-226.
17.
FuertesJ. N.MivilleM. L.MohrJ. J.SedlacekW. E.GretchenD. (2000). Factor structure and short form of the Miville–Guzman Universality–Diversity Scale. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 33, 157-169.
18.
GilesM.HertzK. (1994). Racial threat and partisan identification. American Political Science Review, 88, 317-326.
19.
HicksJ. A.KingL. A. (2009). Meaning in life as a subjective judgment and lived experience. Social & Personality Psychology Compass, 3, 638-653.
20.
HillP. L.TurianoN. A. (2014). Purpose in life as a predictor of mortality across adulthood. Psychological Science, 25, 1482-1486.
21.
KeyesC. L. M. (2011). Authentic purpose: The spiritual infrastructure of life. Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, 8, 281-297.
22.
KimE. S.SunJ. K.ParkN.KubzanskyL. D.PetersonC. (2013). Purpose in life and reduced risk of myocardial infarction among older U.S. adults with coronary heart disease: A two-year follow-up. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 36, 124-133.
23.
KingL. A. (2001). The health benefits of writing about life goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 798-807.
24.
KingL. A.HicksJ. A.KrullJ.Del GaisoA. K. (2006). Positive affect and the experience of meaning in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 179-196.
25.
McIntoshP. (1998). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. In McGoldrickM. (Ed.), Re-visioning family therapy: Race, culture, and gender in clinical practice (pp. 147-152). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
26.
McKnightP. E.KashdanT. B. (2009). Purpose in life as a system that creates and sustains health and well-being: An integrative, testable theory. Review of General Psychology, 13, 242-251.
27.
MivilleM. L.GelsoC. J.PannuR.LiuW.TouradjiP.HollowayP.FuertesJ. (1999). Appreciating similarities and valuing differences: The Miville–Guzman Universality–Diversity Scale. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 46, 291-307.
28.
MorrisonK. R.PlautV. C.YbarraO. (2010). Predicting whether multiculturalism positively or negatively influences White Americans’ intergroup attitudes: The role of ethnic identification. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 1648-1661.
29.
NevilleH. A.LillyR. L.DuranG.LeeR. M.BrowneL. (2000). Construction and initial validation of the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS). Journal of Counseling Psychology, 47, 59-70.
OuttenH. R.SchmittM. T.MillerD. A.GarciaA. L. (2012). Feeling threatened about the future: Whites’ emotional reactions to anticipated ethnic demographic changes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 14-25.
32.
PettigrewT. F.TroppL. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 751-783.
33.
PutnamR. D. (2007). E pluribus unum: Diversity and community in the twenty-first century. The 2006 Johan Skytte prize lecture. Scandinavian Political Studies, 30, 137-174.
34.
QuinnB. (2012). Other-oriented purpose: The potential roles of beliefs about the world and other people. Youth & Society. Advance online publication. doi:10.1177/0044118X12452435
35.
RydellR. J.McConnellA. R.MackieD. M. (2008). Consequences of discrepant explicit and implicit attitudes: Cognitive dissonance and increased information processing. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 1526-1532.
36.
RyffC. D. (1989). Scales of psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 1069-1081.
37.
RyffC. D.KeyesC. (1995). The structure of psychological well-being revisited. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 719-727.
38.
RyffC. D.SingerB. H. (2006). Best news yet on the six-factor model of well-being. Social Science Research, 35, 1103-1119.
39.
SchulzA. J.ZenkB. A.IsraelG.MentzG.StokesS.GaleaS. (2008). Do neighborhood economic characteristics, racial composition, and residential stability predict perceptions of stress associated with the physical and social environment? Findings from a multilevel analysis in Detroit. Journal of Urban Health, 85, 642-661.
40.
ShermanD. K.CohenG. L. (2006). The psychology of self-defense: Self-affirmation theory. In ZannaM. P. (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 38, pp. 183-242). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
41.
SpaniermanL. B.NevilleH. A.LiaoH. Y.HammerJ. H.WangY. F. (2008). Participation in formal and informal campus diversity experiences: Effects on students’ racial democratic beliefs. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 1, 108-125.
42.
SteinR.PostS.RindenA. L. (2000). Reconciling context and contact effects on racial attitudes. Political Research Quarterly, 53, 285-303.
43.
StraussJ. P.ConnerleyM. L.AmmermannP. A. (2003). The “threat hypothesis,” personality, and attitudes toward diversity. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 39, 32-52.
44.
UnzuetaM. M.BinningK. R. (2010). Which racial groups are associated with diversity?Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 16, 443-446.
WatsonD.ClarkL. A.TellegenA. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063-1070. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063
47.
Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (Dustin A. Cable, creator). (2013). [Demographic map]. Retrieved from http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap
48.
WickramaK. A. S.BryantC. M. (2003). Community contexts of social resources and adolescent mental health. Journal of Marriage and Family, 65, 850-866. doi:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003.00850.x
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
