Infectious Disease Prevalence,Not Race Exposure,Predicts Both Implicit and Explicit Racial Prejudice Across the United States

Abstract

What factors increase racial prejudice? Across the United States, increased exposure to Black Americans has been hypothesized to increase White Americans’ prejudicial attitudes toward Black Americans. Here we test an alternative explanation: People living in regions with higher infectious disease rates have a greater tendency to avoid out-groups because such avoidance reduces their perceived likelihood of contracting illnesses. Consistent with this parasite-stress hypothesis, we show that both White and Black individuals (N > 77,000) living in U.S. states in which disease rates are higher display increased implicit (automatic) and explicit (conscious) racial prejudice. These results survived the inclusion of several individual- and state-level controls previously used to explain variability in prejudice. Furthermore, showing disease-related primes to White individuals with strong germ aversion increased their explicit, but not implicit, anti-Black/pro-White prejudice. Domestic out-groups, not just foreigners, may therefore experience increased overt forms of prejudice when disease rates are high.

Keywords

parasite-stress theory behavioral immune system implicit association test racial prejudice Bayesian racism

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ajzen

Fishbein

Lohmann

Albarracín

(2018). The influence of attitudes on behavior. In Albarracín

Johnson

B. T.

(Eds.), The handbook of attitudes: Volume 1. Basic principles (2nd ed., pp. 197–255). New York, NY: Routledge.

Alba

Rumbaut

R. G.

Marotz

(2005). A distorted nation: Perceptions of racial/ethnic group sizes and attitudes toward immigrants and other minorities. Social Forces, 84, 901–919.

Barlow

F. K.

Paolini

Pedersen

Hornsey

M. J.

Radke

H. R. M.

Harwood

… Sibley

C. G

. (2012). The contact caveat: Negative contact predicts increased prejudice more than positive contact predicts reduced prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 1629–1643. doi:10.1177/0146167212457953

Baumeister

R. F.

Bushman

B. J.

(2010). Social psychology and human nature. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Beall

A. T.

Hofer

M. K.

Schaller

(2016). Infections and elections: Did an Ebola outbreak influence the 2014 U.S. Federal elections (and if so, How)? Psychological Science, 27, 595–605. doi:10.1177/0956797616628861

Benjamin

A. J.

Kepes

Bushman

B. J.

(2018). Effects of weapons on aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, hostile appraisals, and aggressive behavior: A meta-analytic review of the weapons effect literature. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 22, 347–377. doi:10.1177/1088868317725419

Bianchi

E. C.

(2016). American individualism rises and falls with the economy: Cross-temporal evidence that individualism declines when the economy falters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111, 567–584. doi:10.1037/pspp0000114

Carvacho

Zick

Haye

González

Manzi

Kocik

Bertl

(2013). On the relation between social class and prejudice: The roles of education, income, and ideological attitudes. European Journal of Social Psychology, 43, 272–285. doi:10.1002/ejsp.1961

Chaplin

D. D.

(2010). Overview of the immune response. The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 125, S3–S23. doi:10.1016/j.jaci.2009.12.980

10.

Cosmides

Tooby

Kurzban

(2003). Perceptions of race. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 173–179. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00057-3

11.

Crandall

C. S.

Moriarty

(1995). Physical illness stigma and social rejection. The British Journal of Social Psychology, 34, 67–83.

12.

Dobson

A. P.

Carper

E. R.

(1996). Infectious diseases and human population history. BioScience, 46, 115–126. doi:10.2307/1312814

13.

Duncan

L. A.

Schaller

(2009). Prejudicial attitudes toward older adults may be exaggerated when people feel vulnerable to infectious disease: Evidence and implications. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 9, 97–115. doi:10.1111/j.1530-2415.2009.01188.x

14.

Eppig

Fincher

C. L.

Thornhill

(2011). Parasite prevalence and the distribution of intelligence among the states of the USA. Intelligence, 39, 155–160. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2011.02.008

15.

Faulkner

Schaller

Park

J. H.

Duncan

L. A.

(2004). Evolved disease-avoidance mechanisms and contemporary xenophobic attitudes. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 7, 333–353. doi:10.1177/1368430204046142

16.

Fincher

C. L.

Thornhill

(2012). Parasite-stress promotes in-group assortative sociality: The cases of strong family ties and heightened religiosity. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35, 61–79. doi:10.1017/S0140525X11000021

17.

Frey

W. H.

Myers

(2005). Racial segregation in US metropolitan areas and cities, 1990–2000: Patterns, trends, and explanations. Population Studies Center Research Report (05–573). Retrieved from http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/pubs/pdf/rr05-573.pdf

18.

Graf

Paolini

Rubin

(2014). Negative intergroup contact is more influential, but positive intergroup contact is more common: Assessing contact prominence and contact prevalence in five central European countries. European Journal of Social Psychology, 44, 536–547. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2052

19.

Greenwald

A. G.

Nosek

B. A.

Banaji

M. R.

(2003). Understanding and using the implicit association test: I. An improved scoring algorithm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 197–216. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.197

20.

Greenwald

A. G.

Poehlman

T. A.

Uhlmann

E. L.

Banaji

M. R.

(2009). Understanding and using the implicit association test: III. Meta-analysis of predictive validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 17–41. doi:10.1037/a0015575

21.

Hayes

A. F.

(2017). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guildford Press.

22.

Holloway

S. R.

Wright

Ellis

(2012). The racially fragmented city? Neighborhood racial segregation and diversity jointly considered. The Professional Geographer, 64, 63–82. doi:10.1080/00330124.2011.585080

23.

Hotez

P. J.

(2008). Neglected infections of poverty in the United States of America. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 2, e256. doi:10.1371/journal.pntd.0000256

24.

Inbar

Westgate

E. C.

Pizarro

D. A.

Nosek

B. A.

(2016). Can a naturally occurring pathogen threat change social attitudes? Evaluations of gay men and lesbians during the 2014 Ebola epidemic. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7, 420–427. doi:10.1177/1948550616639651

25.

Jones

K. E.

Patel

N. G.

Levy

M. A.

Storeygard

Balk

Gittleman

J. L.

Daszak

(2008). Global trends in emerging infectious diseases. Nature, 451, 990–993. doi:10.1038/nature06536

26.

Jost

J. T.

Banaji

M. R.

Nosek

B. A.

(2004). A decade of system Justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status Quo. Political Psychology, 25, 881–919.

27.

Kim

H. S.

Sherman

D. K.

Updegraff

J. A.

(2016). Fear of Ebola: The influence of collectivism on xenophobic threat responses. Psychological Science, 27, 935–944. doi:10.1177/0956797616642596

28.

Kurzban

Leary

M. R.

(2001). Evolutionary origins of stigmatization: The functions of social exclusion. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 187–208. doi:10.1037//0033-2909.127.2.187

29.

MacInnis

C. C.

Page-Gould

(2015). How can intergroup interaction be bad if intergroup contact is good? Exploring and reconciling an apparent paradox in the science of intergroup relations. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10, 307–327. doi:10.1177/1745691614568482

30.

Makhanova

Miller

S. L.

Maner

J. K.

(2015). Germs and the out-group: Chronic and situational disease concerns affect intergroup categorization. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 9, 8–19. doi:10.1037/ebs0000028

31.

Murray

D. R.

Schaller

(2016). The behavioral immune system. In Olson

J. M.

Zanna

M. P.

(Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 53, pp. 75–129). New York, NY: Academic Press.

32.

Navarrete

C. D.

Fessler

D. M. T.

(2006). Disease avoidance and ethnocentrism: The effects of disease vulnerability and disgust sensitivity on intergroup attitudes. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27, 270–282. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2005.12.001

33.

Nelson

(2002). Unequal treatment: Confronting racial and ethnic disparities in health care. Journal of the National Medical Association, 94, 666–668.

34.

Park

J. H.

Faulkner

Schaller

(2003). Evolved disease-avoidance processes and contemporary anti-social behavior: Prejudicial attitudes and avoidance of people with physical disabilities. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 27, 65–87.

35.

Park

J. H.

Schaller

Crandall

C. S.

(2007). Pathogen-avoidance mechanisms and the stigmatization of obese people. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28, 410–414. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2007.05.008

36.

Petersen

M. B.

(2017). Healthy out-group members are represented psychologically as infected in-group members. Psychological Science, 28, 1857–1863. doi:10.1177/0956797617728270

37.

Pettigrew

T. F.

Tropp

L. R.

(2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 751–783. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.90.5.751

38.

Pollet

T. V.

Tybur

J. M.

Frankenhuis

W. E.

Rickard

I. J.

(2014). What can cross-cultural correlations teach us about human nature? Human Nature, 25, 410–429. doi:10.1007/s12110-014-9206-3

39.

Putnam

R. 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.

40.

Rae

J. R.

Newheiser

A.-K.

Olson

K. R.

(2015). Exposure to racial out-groups and implicit race bias in the United States. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6, 535–543. doi:10.1177/1948550614567357

41.

Reid

S. A.

Zhang

Anderson

G. L.

Gasiorek

Bonilla

Peinado

(2012). Parasite primes make foreign-accented English sound more distant to people who are disgusted by pathogens (but not by sex or morality). Evolution and Human Behavior, 33, 471–478. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2011.12.009

42.

Richardus

J. H.

Kunst

A. E.

(2001). Black–White differences in infectious disease mortality in the United States. American Journal of Public Health, 91, 1251–1253.

43.

Schaller

Miller

G. E.

Gervais

W. M.

Yager

Chen

(2010). Mere visual perception of other people’s disease symptoms facilitates a more aggressive immune response. Psychological Science, 21, 649–652. doi:10.1177/0956797610368064

44.

Schaller

Park

J. H.

(2011). The behavioral immune system (and Why It Matters). Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20, 99–103. doi:10.1177/0963721411402596

45.

Shrira

Wisman

Webster

G. D.

(2013). Guns, germs, and stealing: Exploring the link between infectious disease and crime. Evolutionary Psychology, 11. doi:10.1177/147470491301100124

46.

Smith

P. K.

Dijksterhuis

Chaiken

(2008). Subliminal exposure to faces and racial attitudes: Exposure to whites makes whites like blacks less. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 50–64. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2007.01.006

47.

Taylor

M. C.

(1998). How white attitudes vary with the racial composition of local populations: Numbers count. American Sociological Review, 63, 512–535. doi:10.2307/2657265

48.

Thornhill

Fincher

C. L.

(2014). The parasite-stress theory of values and sociality. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International.

49.

Uhlmann

E. L.

Brescoll

V. L.

Machery

(2010). The motives underlying stereotype-based discrimination against members of stigmatized groups. Social Justice Research, 23, 1–16. doi:10.1007/s11211-010-0110-7

50.

Van de Vyver

Houston

D. M.

Abrams

Vasiljevic

(2016). Boosting belligerence: How the July 7, 2005, London bombings affected liberals’ moral foundations and prejudice. Psychological Science, 27, 169–177. doi:10.1177/0956797615615584

51.

B.-P.

Chang

(2012). The social impact of pathogen threat: How disease salience influences conformity. Personality and Individual Differences, 53, 50–54. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2012.02.023

52.

Nosek

Greenwald

(2014). Psychology data from the race implicit association test on the project implicit demo website. Journal of Open Psychology Data, 2. doi:10.5334/jopd.ac

53.

Zebrowitz

L. A.

White

Wieneke

(2008). Mere exposure and racial prejudice: Exposure to other-race faces increases liking for strangers of that race. Social Cognition, 26, 259–275. doi:10.1521/soco.2008.26.3.259

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.

0.00 MB

0.27 MB