Article summary of Understanding and addressing contemporary racism: From aversive racism to the common ingroup identity model by Gaertner & Dovidio - 2005 - Chapter

Introduction

This article reflects two major research question. First: What are the dynamics of a subtle form of racism, aversive racism, that exists among well-intentioned Whites? Second: What can we do about it?

Gaertner studied aversive racism. This study looked at the willingness of registered Liberal and Conservative Party members in New York City to help a Black or White motorist whose car had broken down on a local highway. The motorists were thus Black or White and were identifiable on the basis of their dialects. They made phone calls, claiming to have been dialing their mechanic's number from a public telephone along the highway. They explained that they now needed the respondent's help to call the mechanic because they used their last coin for this wrong-number call. It was found that Conservative Party members discriminated by helping Black callers less often than White callers, whereas Liberal Party members did not discriminate. However, they did discriminate in a different way. Even though Liberals helped Black and White callers equivalently when they knew their assistance was needed, they terminated their help more readily for Black than for White callers prior to learning that the callers needed their help. Thus, they hung up prematurely. These results were puzzling and the authors of this article aimed to explain these findings by applying the notion of aversive racism. Thus, they wanted to explain why nonprejudiced Liberals discriminated against Blacks, but only when they were not sure that their help was needed.

Contemporary Bias: Aversive Racism

Gunnar Myrdal pointed to the paradox between egalitarian values and racist traditions in the United States. He named this "the American dilemma". This dilemma reflects the tension between central principles of equality and fairness in the society and the daily appearance of systematic prejudice and discrimination, at an individual and societal level, which produces racial inequality and reinforces racial disparities. Sixty years after Myrdal's observation, the American dilemma is still evident. This principle of equality remains a fundamental social value, and since the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, overt expressions of prejudice of Whites towards Blacks in the United States have declined significantly over the past several decades. However, there is still evidence of racial disparity and discrimination still remains. 

Joel Kovel coined the term 'aversive racism', and distinguished it from 'dominative racism'. Aversive racists do sympathize with victims of past injustice, they support the principle of racial equality, and regard themselves as nonprejudiced, but, they also possess negative feelings and beliefs about Blacks. This may be unconscious. It is different from dominative racism, in that it is more subtle and that it is presumed to characterize the attitudes of most well-educated and liberal Whites in the United States. However, the consequences of aversive racism are as intense as traditional racism.

The nature of aversive racism

Thus, many Whites consciously, explicitly, and sincerely support egalitarian principles and believe that they are nonprejudiced. However, they still have negative feelings and beliefs about Blacks and other historically disadvantaged groups. However, these feelings and beliefs happen unconsciously and develop as a consequence of normal and unavoidable functional, cognitive, motivational and social-cultural processes. Cognitive processes refer to that people normally categorize others into groups, in terms that delineate one's own group from other groups. This mere categorization of people into the ingroup and outgroup is enough to initiate bias. Therefore, the existence of both the egalitarian values and unconscious negative feelings toward Blacks, makes aversive racism a complex construct.

When interracial interaction is unavoidable, aversive racists experience anxiety and discomfort. Consequently, they try to disengage from the interaction as quickly as possible. Therefore, they are more motivated to avoid wrongdoing in interracial interactions. However, they still manifest their negative feelings in subtle, indirect, or rationalizable ways. Thus, the "aversive" in aversive racism reflects two types of aversion. First, because of the anxiety and discomfort, aversive racists find interracial interactions aversive and try to avoid it. Second, because aversive racists believe that they are nonprejudiced and consciously embrace egalitarian ideals, they find any thoughts or indications that they might be a racist, aversive. Therefore, they are motivated to avoid wrongdoing and acting inappropriately in interracial situation. They try to avoid thinking bad thoughts about Blacks, experiencing bad feelings towards Blacks, and behaving in a discriminatory way toward Blacks. 

The expression of subtle bias

The aversive racism framework helps to identify when discrimination against Blacks and other minority groups will or will not occur. Old-fashioned racists exhibit direct and overt patterns of discrimination, whereas aversive racists' actions may appear more variable and inconsistent. Sometimes they discriminate and at other times they do not. 

The framework suggests that, because aversive racists consciously recognize and aspire to be nonprejudiced, they will not discriminate in situations with strong social norms when discrimination is obvious to others and themselves. The authors propose that when people are presented with a situation in which the appropriate response is clear, aversive racists will not discriminate against Blacks. In these circumstances, aversive racists will be especially motivated to avoid feelings, beliefs, and behaviors that could be associated with racist intent. However, as mentioned before, they do possess (unconscious) negative feelings towards Blacks. They will eventually express these feelings, but in subtle, indirect, and rationalizable ways. Thus, discrimination will occur in situations in which social norms are weak or when the guidelines for appropriate behavior are vague. Also, discrimination will occur when an aversive racist can justify or rationalize a negative response on the basis of some factor other than race. Under these circumstances, aversive racists may engage in behaviors that ultimately harm Blacks, but in ways that allow them to maintain their self-image as nonprejudiced.

Empirical evidence of the influence of aversive racism

An experiment showed that aversive racism can operate in dramatic and consequential ways. The stabbing of a woman, Kitty Genovese, lead to an experiment. In the case of Kitty Genovese, 38 bystanders witnessed the stabbing, but did not intervene to help. When looking at explanations for this behavior, it seems that feelings of responsibility play a key role. When a person witnesses an emergency and knows that he or she is the only bystander, this person will most likely help. In contrast, when a person witnesses an emergency but believes that there are other people who might help, the responsibility for helping is share. This decreases the likelihood of that person to help.

This incident inspired the authors to conduct an experiment in which White participants witnessed a staged emergency involving a Black or White victim. They made some participants believe that they would be the only witness to the emergency, while others believed that there would be other White people who also witnessed the emergency. The authors hypothesized that, because aversive racists do not act in overtly racist ways, Whites would not discriminate when they were the only witness. However, Whites were expected to be less helpful to Black than to White victims when they had a justifiable excuse not to get involved, such as the belief that another witness would help. The findings supported their hypotheses. When White participants believed that they were the only witness, they helped White and Black victims equivalently. However, when they thought that there were other witnesses, they could rationalize a decision not to help on the basis of some factor other than race. In this case, they helped Black victims only half as often as White victims. Thus, the subtle biases can have dramatic and life-threatening consequences. There are also other examples of the subtle bias. For example, it happens in personnel selection decisions and in college admission decisions. Hodson and colleagues found that more racially biased Whites weighed the weaker aspect of the applicant's credentials as more important for admissions decisions when the candidate was Black than when the candidate was White. There is also evidence that Blacks and Whites are not treated equally under the law. Blacks have been more likely to be convicted of crimes and, if they are convicted, sentenced to longer terms for similar crimes, particularly if the victim is White. The authors propose that aversive racism is particularly common in the legal context because evidence may offer nonracial justifications for actions. 

Dissociated attitudes: explicit and implicit

Explicit attitudes and stereotypes operate consciously and are exemplified by traditional, self-report measures of these constructs. In contrast, implicit attitudes and stereotypes are evaluations and beliefs that are automatically activated by the mere presence of the attitude object. Implicit attitudes and stereotypes function in an unconscious and unintentional manner. To assess implicit attitudes and stereotypes, often response latency procedures, memory tasks, physiological measures and indirect self-report measures are used. The authors have shown consistent evidence of Whites' implicit racial bias. For example, they found that by subliminally presenting schematic faces of Blacks and Whites systematically influenced the reaction times with which Whites indicated whether positive or negative traits describe a certain person. And, lower reaction times reflect greater associations. They also found that White participants have more positive associations with Whites than with Blacks as well as more negative associations with Blacks than with Whites, even though they were not aware of this. Also, Whites' unconscious attitudes are largely dissociated from their conscious, self-reported attitudes. The correlation between these attitudes (implicit and explicit) is .24, which shows that people's self-reports (explicit attitudes) do not match their implicit attitudes (the associations they make). 

Implicit Bias and Interracial Interaction

The authors found that Whites' unconscious negative attitudes predict nonverbal cues of discomfort (increased blinking) and aversion (decreased eye contact) toward Blacks, whereas Whites self-reported conscious attitudes predict overt evaluations and indications of liking towards Blacks. This means that aversive racists do have positive conscious attitudes and do want to be supportive of Blacks, but they also have unconscious negative attitudes or associations and are likely to convey mixed messages in interracial interactions.

In less controllable and monitorable nonverbal behaviors, Whites' implicit racial attitudes predicted bias, instead of their self-reported prejudice.

Blacks and Whites also have divergent views on the quality of interracial interactions. White participants often believe that they behaved in a friendly and nonprejudiced way and that the interaction was positive and productive. However, their Black interaction partners were less satisfied with the interaction compared to Whites. Also, both the Black and White participants were unaware of the different experiences of the interaction.

The Common Ingroup Identity Model

The authors wanted to look at what could help against bias. 

Social Categorization and Social Identity

Research has shown that people favor ingroup members over outgroup members in their evaluations, feelings, and actions. Bias that follows from social categorization is often the consequence of ingroup favoritism instead of an anti-outgroup orientation.

The authors hypothesized that if members of different groups are induced to conceive themselves as a single group rather than as two completely separate groups, the attitudes towards former outgroup members will become more positive through the cognitive and motivational forces that result from ingroup formation, which is a consequence that could increase the sense of connectedness across group lines.

Thus, it may be possible to affect the level of category inclusiveness people use when categorizing other people, including themselves. It may also be possible to alter whether people identify themselves as distinct individuals or as group members. So, in other words, it is possible to engineer a recategorization or decategorization of perceived group boundaries in ways that reduce intergroup bias and conflict.

Initial Empirical Investigations

The authors wondered which factors might lead to more inclusive group representations, especially among different racial groups. It is known that feelings and behaviors toward outgroup members becomes more positive and intergroup relations become more harmonious when groups work together under certain conditions. These conditions are outlined in the Contact Hypothesis, and include equal status between the groups, opportunities for self-revealing interactions, and equalitarian norms endorsed by relevant authority. 

The Dynamics of the Common Ingroup Identity Model

The Common Ingroup Identity Model identifies potential antecedents and outcomes of recategorization. 

Common Identity and Motivation in Interracial Interaction

Thus, the Common Ingroup Identity Model can potentially change the motivational orientation or intentions of aversive racists from trying to avoid wrongdoing to trying to do what is right. The authors hypothesized that because aversive racists have the primary motivation to avoid wrongdoing and thus to suppress negative thoughts and feelings, explicitly instructing participants to avoid wrongdoing compared to instructing them to do nothing, would lead to a stronger accessibility of negative thoughts after interacting with a Black partner. Participants who were instructed to behave correctly would be expected to escape such a rebound effect. The results support these expectations. When the partner was White, the experimental conditions did not differ significantly in the accessibility of negative thoughts from one another or from baseline. However, when the confederate was Black, the increased accessibility of negative relative to positive characteristics in the avoid wrongdoing and no instructions conditions was significantly greater than in the do right and same team conditions. Thus, the development of a common ingroup identity can affect motivation in interracial situations from one of suppressing negative thoughts, feelings, and actions to one that is positive and more prosocial. However, our findings lead some people to question whether developing a common ingroup identity is a realistic strategy.

The Green Circle Elementary School Anti-Bias Education Program

The Green Circle Elementary School intervention aims to teach children to be more inclusive in terms of bringing those who differ from themselves literally into their circle of caring and sharing into their own circle of caring and sharing fosters appreciation of their common humanity as well as respect for their differences. The intervention works like this: each facilitator visits each class for about 40 minutes and shows children a small green circle on a board. The facilitator then states: "Whenever you see the green circle, you should think about your world of people: the people who you care about and the people who care about you." A stick figure is added to the circle and the students are told that the figure represents themselves. The facilitator explains that each person has "a big job of deciding who is going to be in your circle, how to treat people, and how big your circle will grow" and engages children in a variety of exercises designed to expand this circle. Then, the facilitator states: "All of us belong to one family-the human family." Then, the Green Circle assumes that an appreciation of common humanity will increase children's positive attitudes toward people who would otherwise remain outside of their circle of inclusion.

Based on the goals of the Green Circle Program and the principles of the Common Ingroup Identity Model, the authors expected that children who receive the program would act more inclusive toward others who are different than themselves in playing and sharing. The results showed that first- and second-grade children in fairly well-integrated classrooms still had a general preference for playing and sharing with children of the same race than a different race. However, the results also showed that the Green Circle intervention did lead children to be more inclusive in terms of their most preferred playmate. More specifically, children who participated in Green Circle activities showed a significantly greater increase in willingness to select a child they "would most want to play with" who was different from them.