Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online 2024-3
Beliefs That White People Are Poor,Above and Beyond Beliefs That Black People Are Poor,Predict White (But Not Black) Americans’ Attitudes Toward Welfare Recipients and Policy
In past work, White Americans’ beliefs about Black poverty have predicted lower perceived work ethic of the poor, and, thus, less welfare support. In this article, we examine whether beliefs about White poverty predict more positive attributions about the poor among three representative samples of White Americans. Study 1 reveals that White (but not Black) Americans’ White-poor beliefs predict increased perceptions that welfare recipients are hardworking, which predict more welfare support. Study 2 demonstrates that the link between White Americans’ White-poor beliefs and the humanization of welfare recipients is stronger among White Americans who feel intergroup status threat (i.e., those who hold racial zero-sum beliefs). Study 3 replicates and extends Study 2 by using an experimental approach. Together, these data suggest that White Americans’ White-poor beliefs function to humanize welfare recipients as a means to justify policies that could help the ingroup, preserving the racial status quo.
BonamC. M.Nair DasV.ColemanB. R.SalterP. (2019). Ignoring history, denying racism: Mounting evidence for the Marley hypothesis and epistemologies of ignorance. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(2), 257–265.
2.
Brown-IannuzziJ. L.CooleyE.MarshburnC. K.McKeeS. E.LeiR. F. (2021). Investigating the interplay between race, work ethic stereotypes, and attitudes toward welfare recipients and policies. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 12(7), 1155–1164. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620983051
3.
Brown-IannuzziJ. L.CooleyE.McKeeS. E.HydenC. (2019). Wealthy Whites and poor Blacks: Implicit associations between racial groups and wealth predict explicit opposition toward helping the poor. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 82, 26–34.
4.
Brown-IannuzziJ. L.DotschR.CooleyE.PayneB. K. (2017). The relationship between mental representations of welfare recipients and attitudes toward welfare. Psychological Science, 28(1), 92–103.
5.
BruneauE.JacobyN.KteilyN.SaxeR. (2018). Denying humanity: The distinct neural correlates of blatant dehumanization. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 147(7), 1078–1093.
6.
CohenD.ShinF.LiuX.OndishP.KrausM. W. (2017). Defining social class across time and between groups. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(11), 1530–1545.
CooleyE.Brown-IannuzziJ. L.BoudreauC. (2019). Shifting stereotypes of welfare recipients can reverse racial biases in support for wealth redistribution. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(8), 1065–1074.
9.
CooleyE.Brown-IannuzziJ. L.LeiR. F.CipolliW.IIIPhilbrookL. E. (2021). The policy implications of feeling relatively low versus high status within a privileged group. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 150(11), 2346–2361. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001051
10.
CooleyE.Brown-IannuzziJ. L.LeiR. F.PhilbrookL. E.CipolliI. I. I.W.McKeeS. E. (2020). Investigating the health consequences for White Americans who believe White Americans are wealthy. Social Psychological and Personality Science,12(3), 371–382.
11.
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(6), 750–761.
12.
DobbsR.NicholsonS. P. (2022). Inverting the lens: White privilege denial in evaluations of politicians and policy. Perspectives on Politics, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592721004102
13.
DupreeC. H.TorrezB.ObiohaO.FiskeS. T. (2020). Race–status associations: Distinct effects of three novel measures among White and Black perceivers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 120(3), 601–625.
14.
EssesV. M.DovidioJ. F.JacksonL. M.ArmstrongT. L. (2001). The immigration dilemma: The role of perceived group competition, ethnic prejudice, and national identity. Journal of Social Issues, 57(3), 389–412.
15.
FaulF.ErdfelderE.BuchnerA.LangA. G. (2009). Statistical power analyses using G* Power 3.1: Tests for correlation and regression analyses. Behavior Research Methods, 41(4), 1149–1160.
16.
FriedmanM.FriedmanR. (1990). Free to choose: A personal statement. Penguin Books.
17.
GilensM. (1996). “Race Coding” and white opposition to welfare. American Political Science Review, 90(3), 593–604.
18.
GilensM. (1999). Why Americans hate welfare: Race, media, and the politics of antipoverty policy. University of Chicago Press.
19.
Giner-SorollaR.AbersonC. L.BostynD. H.CarpenterT.ConriqueB. G.LewisN. A.SoderbergC. (2019). Power to detect what? Considerations for planning and evaluating sample size [Unpublished manuscript].
20.
GrahamC.PintoS. (2021). The geography of desperation in America: Labor force participation, mobility, place, and well-being. Social Science & Medicine, 270, 113612.
21.
GrayH. M.GrayK.WegnerD. M. (2007). Dimensions of mind perception. Science, 315(5812), 619–619.
22.
HayesA. F. (2017). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis (2nd ed.). The Guildford Press.
23.
JardinaA. (2019). White identity politics. Cambridge University Press.
JostJ. T.BanajiM. R.NosekB. A. (2004). A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology, 25(6), 881–919.
26.
KnowlesE. D.TroppL. R. (2018). The racial and economic context of Trump support: Evidence for threat, identity, and contact effects in the 2016 Presidential Election. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 9(3), 275–284.
27.
KonovalovaE.Le MensG. (2020). An information sampling explanation for the in-group heterogeneity effect. Psychological Review, 127(1), 47–73.
28.
KrausM. W.OnyeadorI. N.DaumeyerN. M.RuckerJ. M.RichesonJ. A. (2019). The misperception of racial economic inequality. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(6), 899–921.
29.
KteilyN.BruneauE.WaytzA.CotterillS. (2015). The ascent of man: Theoretical and empirical evidence for blatant dehumanization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(5), 901–931.
30.
LoweryB. S.UnzuetaM. M.KnowlesE. D.GoffP. A. (2006). Concern for the in-group and opposition to affirmative action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(6), 961.
31.
NelsonJ. C.AdamsG.SalterP. S. (2013). The Marley hypothesis: Denial of racism reflects ignorance of history. Psychological Science, 24(2), 213–218.
32.
NortonM. I.SommersS. R. (2011). Whites see racism as a zero-sum game that they are now losing. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(3), 215–218.
33.
OmA. (2018). The opioid crisis in black and white: The role of race in our nation’s recent drug epidemic. Journal of Public Health, 40(4), e614–e615.
34.
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(1), 14–25.
35.
PhillipsL. T.LoweryB. S. (2015). The hard-knock life? Whites claim hardships in response to racial inequity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 61, 12–18.
36.
PhillipsL. T.LoweryB. S. (2018). Herd invisibility: The psychology of racial privilege. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(3), 156–162.
37.
PlantE. A.DevineP. G. (1998). Internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(3), 811.
38.
RuckerJ.DukerA.RichesonJ. (2019). Structurally unjust: How lay beliefs about racism relate to perceptions of and responses to racial inequality in criminal justice. PsyArXiv.
39.
SidaniusJ.PrattoF. (1993). The inevitability of oppression and the dynamics of social dominance. In SnidermanP. M.TetlockP. E.CarminesE. G. (Eds.), Prejudice, politics, and the American dilemma (pp. 173–211). Stanford University Press.
WettsR.WillerR. (2018). Privilege on the precipice: Perceived racial status threats lead White Americans to oppose welfare programs. Social Forces, 97(2), 793–822.
43.
WilkinsC. L.WellmanJ. D.BabbittL. G.ToosiN. R.SchadK. D. (2015). You can win but I can’t lose: Bias against high-status groups increases their zero-sum beliefs about discrimination. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 57, 1–14.
44.
WilsonG. (2001). Support for redistributive policies among the African American middle class: Race and class effects. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 18, 97–115.
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.
