White People Problems? White Privilege Beliefs Predict Attitudes Toward Confederate Symbols

Abstract

Building upon Intergroup Threat Theory and research on group-level empathy, we tested the relationship between White privilege beliefs and White Americans’ attitudes toward Confederate symbols. In three experiments, participants induced to think about White privilege exhibited more opposition to Confederate symbols, perceived less realistic threat to their group’s power/resources and symbolic threat to their group’s values/identity from the prospect of these symbols being removed, and (in Study 2) felt more empathetic toward racial/ethnic minorities who may view these symbols. Further, a meta-analytic path analysis across studies demonstrated that the effect of White privilege reminders on opposition to Confederate symbols was driven by reduced realistic and symbolic threat, as well as greater outgroup empathy.

Keywords

White privilege realistic threat symbolic threat confederate symbols outgroup empathy Intergroup Threat Theory

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aloe

A. M.

Thompson

C. G.

(2013). The synthesis of partial effect sizes. Journal of the Society for Social Work & Research, 4(4), 390–405.

Ancis

J. R.

Szymanski

D. M.

(2001). Awareness of White privilege among White counseling trainees. The Counseling Psychologist, 29(4), 548–569.

Batson

C. D.

Ahmad

N. Y.

(2009). Using empathy to improve intergroup attitudes and relations. Social Issues and Policy Review, 3(1), 141–177.

Batson

C. D.

Chang

Orr

Rowland

(2002). Empathy, attitudes, and action: Can feeling for a member of a stigmatized group motivate one to help the group? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(12), 1656–1666.

Batson

C. D.

Lishner

D. A.

Carpenter

Dulin

Harjusola-Webb

Stocks

E. L.

Gale

Hassan

Sampat

(2003). “ . . . As you would have them do unto you”: Does imagining yourself in the other’s place stimulate moral action? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(9), 1190–1201.

Benjamin

Block

Clemons

Laird

Wamble

(2020). Set in stone? Predicting confederate monument removal. PS: Political Science & Politics, 53(2), 237–242.

Borenstein

(2009). Effect sizes for continuous data. In Cooper

Hedges

L. V.

Valentine

J. C.

(Eds.), The handbook of research synthesis and meta-analysis (2nd ed., pp. 221–235). Russell Sage.

Branscombe

N. R.

Schmitt

M. T.

Schiffhauer

(2007). Racial attitudes in response to thoughts of White privilege. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37(2), 203–215.

Cooley

Brown-Iannuzzi

Cottrell

(2019). Liberals perceive more racism than conservatives when police shoot Black men—But, reading about White privilege increases perceived racism, and shifts attributions of guilt, regardless of political ideology. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 85, 103885.

10.

Cooper

C. A.

Knotts

H. G.

(2006). Region, race, and support for the South Carolina Confederate flag. Social Science Quarterly, 87(1), 142–154.

11.

Ebrahimji

Moshtaghlan

Johnston

L. A.

(2020, July). Confederate statues are coming down following George Floyd’s death. Here’s what we know. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/confederate-statues-removed-george-floyd-trnd/index.html

12.

Ehrlinger

Plant

E. A.

Eibach

R. P.

Columb

C. J.

Goplen

J. L.

Kunstman

J. W.

Butz

D. A.

(2011). How exposure to the confederate flag affects willingness to vote for Barack Obama. Political Psychology, 32(1), 131–146.

13.

Faul

Erdfelder

Buchner

Lang

A. G.

(2009). Statistical power analyses using G* Power 3.1: Tests for correlation and regression analyses. Behavior Research Methods, 41(4), 1149–1160.

14.

Hayes

A. F.

(2017). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

15.

Hoff

(2020, June 3). This map shows how many confederate monuments and symbols still stand in the US. https://www.businessinsider.com/confederate-monuments-and-other-symbols-in-the-us-2020-6

16.

Huffmon

S. H.

Knotts

H. G.

McKee

S. C.

(2017). Down with the Southern Cross: Opinions on the Confederate battle flag in South Carolina. Political Science Quarterly, 132(4), 719–741.

17.

Knowles

E. D.

Lowery

B. S.

Chow

R. M.

Unzueta

M. M.

(2014). Deny, distance, or dismantle? How White Americans manage a privileged identity. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9(6), 594–609.

18.

Lemon

(2020, July 1). Majority of Americans now support removing confederate statues, up 16 points from 2018: Poll. https://www.newsweek.com/majority-americans-now-support-removing-confederate-statues-16-points-2018-poll-1519408

19.

Lowery

B. S.

Chow

R. M.

Knowles

E. D.

Unzueta

M. M.

(2012). Paying for positive group esteem: How inequity frames affect Whites’ responses to redistributive policies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(2), 323–336.

20.

McIntosh

(1998). White privilege, color, and crime: A personal account. In Mann

C. R.

Zatz

M. S.

(Eds.), Images of color, images of crime (pp. 207–216). Roxbury Publishing Company.

21.

Morrison

K. R.

Plaut

V. C.

Ybarra

(2010). Predicting whether multiculturalism positively or negatively influences White Americans’ intergroup attitudes: The role of ethnic identification. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(12), 1648–1661.

22.

Murray

K. E.

Marx

D. M.

(2013). Attitudes toward unauthorized immigrants, authorized immigrants, and refugees. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 19(3), 332–341.

23.

Orey

B. D. A.

(2004). White racial attitudes and support for the Mississippi state flag. American Politics Research, 32(1), 102–116.

24.

Phillips

L. T.

Lowery

B. S.

(2015). The hard-knock life? Whites claim hardships in response to racial inequity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 61, 12–18.

25.

Phillips

L. T.

Lowery

B. S.

(2018). Herd invisibility: The psychology of racial privilege. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(3), 156–162.

26.

Powell

A. A.

Branscombe

N. R.

Schmitt

M. T.

(2005). Inequality as ingroup privilege or outgroup disadvantage: The impact of group focus on collective guilt and interracial attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(4), 508–521.

27.

Pratto

Sidanius

Stallworth

L. M.

Malle

B. F.

(1994). Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(4), 741–763.

28.

Renfro

C. L.

Duran

Stephan

W. G.

Clason

D. L.

(2006). The role of threat in attitudes toward affirmative action and its beneficiaries. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 36(1), 41–74.

29.

Rios

Mischkowski

(2019). Shaping responses to torture: What you call it matters. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(6), 934–946.

30.

Salter

P. S.

Adams

Perez

M. J.

(2018). Racism in the structure of everyday worlds: A cultural-psychological perspective. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(3), 150–155.

31.

Sirin

C. V.

Valentino

N. A.

Villalobos

J. D.

(2016). Group empathy in response to nonverbal racial/ethnic cues: A national experiment on immigration policy attitudes. American Behavioral Scientist, 60(14), 1676–1697.

32.

Stephan

W. G.

Boniecki

K. A.

Ybarra

Bettencourt

Ervin

K. S.

Jackson

L. A.

McNatt

P. S.

Renfro

C. L

. (2002). The role of threats in the racial attitudes of Blacks and Whites. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(9), 1242–1254.

33.

Stephan

W. G.

Ybarra

Bachman

(1999). Prejudice toward immigrants. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29(11), 2221–2237.

34.

Stephan

W. G.

Ybarra

Rios

(2015). Intergroup threat theory. In Nelson

T. D.

(Ed.), Handbook of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination, 2nd edition (pp. 255–278). Lawrence Erlbaum.

35.

Stewart

T. L.

Latu

I. M.

Branscombe

N. R.

Phillips

N. L.

Ted Denney

(2012). White privilege awareness and efficacy to reduce racial inequality improve White Americans’ attitudes toward African Americans. Journal of Social Issues, 68(1), 11–27.

36.

Strother

Piston

Ogorzalek

(2017). Pride or prejudice? Racial prejudice, southern heritage, and White support for the confederate battle flag. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 14(1), 295–323.

37.

Swim

J. K.

Miller

D. L.

(1999). White guilt: Its antecedents and consequences for attitudes toward affirmative action. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(4), 500–514.

38.

Todd

N. R.

McConnell

E. A.

Suffrin

R. L.

(2014). The role of attitudes toward white privilege and religious beliefs in predicting social justice interest and commitment. American Journal of Community Psychology, 53(1-2), 109-121.

39.

Vandermaas-Peeler

Cox

Frisch-Freedman

Jones

R. P.

(2017, December). One nation, divided, under Trump: Findings from the 2017 American Values Survey. https://www.prri.org/research/american-values-survey-2017/

40.

Vescio

T. K.

Sechrist

G. B.

Paolucci

M. P.

(2003). Perspective taking and prejudice reduction: The mediational role of empathy arousal and situational attributions. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33(4), 455–472.

41.

Wirtz

van der Pligt

Doosje

(2016). Negative attitudes toward Muslims in The Netherlands: The role of symbolic threat, stereotypes, and moral emotions. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 22(1), 75–83.

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

0.66 MB