Factors that contribute to accurately perceiving anti-black racism and sexism overlap

ABSTRACT

Past research demonstrates that prejudice toward women and Black Americans often co-occur in individuals. The present studies examine factors related to accuracy in estimating the co-occurrence, or overlap, of prejudice toward women and Black Americans. Across two studies, criterion overlap percentages were computed using national datasets and separate participant samples estimated prejudice overlap. Results indicate that beliefs about the generalized nature of prejudice can improve accuracy by reducing faulty underestimation of the overlap in anti-Black racism and sexism. In addition to greater displayed accuracy in perceptions of prototypical perpetrators of prejudice (i.e., estimates of White men compared to White women), the present work suggests that accuracy is improved when estimating sexist attitudes from racist attitudes, rather than vice versa. Together, this work documents the accuracy of prejudice overlap perceptions, for the first time, and factors that facilitate accuracy (i.e., perpetrator prototypicality, known prejudicial attitude), with implications for intergroup dynamics research.

KEYWORDS:

• Generalized prejudice
• interpersonal accuracy
• lay theory of generalized prejudice
• racism
• sexism

Author’s Note

Studies were approved by Rutgers University’s institutional IRB board (Protocol#: 2018001900) and all participants consented to study protocols and data use online. The present manuscript follows ethical guidelines specified in the APA code of conduct. No permissions from other sources were needed. The authors report there are no competing interests to declare. Data files, analysis syntax, materials, and supplemental analyses associated with the manuscript are posted openly online on the Open Science Framework (OSF; link: https://osf.io/gnzsh).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

data availability

The data will be made available upon request by contacting the corresponding author

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2023.2246636.

Notes

1. We explored accuracy of old-fashioned prejudice overlap in Study 2 in an exploratory fashion, with results reported in the Supplement; limitations in measuring self-reported old-fashioned prejudice (social desirability in self-reports of old-fashioned prejudice; see Krumpal, 2013) hinder the interpretation of results. For example, old-fashioned prejudice in the GSS criterion sample was low (only 6.44% of White men endorsed an old-fashioned anti-Black statement), while endorsement of modern prejudices were substantially higher (over 73%).

2. Note, measure wording referring to Black Americans as “Blacks” throughout the present paper was made in the decision to utilize wording used in the national surveys to maintain validity when asking participants to estimate the endorsement of such statements.

3. Dichotomizing prejudice endorsement was imperative to create overlap estimates that were easily interpretable to participants. For example, participants would likely have a difficult time estimating the percentage of White men in the US. who felt slightly cold toward BLM that also felt very cold toward feminists.

4. If absolute value scores were to be used in the present research, valuable information about the directionality of overlap perceptions (i.e., over or underestimations would be lost). Using absolute values would thus make participants who over and underestimate by 10% similarly inaccurate but for vastly different reasons. Correlations with absolute value accuracy scores are reported within the Supplement for each Study.

5. An additional study with an undergraduate sample revealed the same pattern of results. See supplemental analyses.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Rebecca Cipollina

Rebecca Cipollina received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Currently, she is a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University funded by a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) individual training grant. Her research focuses on understanding stigma-based barriers to marginalized groups’ health outcomes.

Kimberly E. Chaney

Kimberly E. Chaney is an Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut in the Department of Psychological Sciences. Her research examines prejudice confrontations and lay theories of prejudice.

Diana T. Sanchez

Diana T. Sanchez is a Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University–New Brunswick who is currently serving as the department chair. Her research program explores complexities and underlying factors associated with close relationships, identity, and stigma with a focus on multiracial identity and gender roles.