Examining the asymmetry in judgments of racism in self and others

ABSTRACT

Across three experiments, participants were provided with a list of racist behaviors that purportedly were enacted from a fellow student but in fact were based on the participants’ own behaviors. People consistently evaluated themselves as less racist than this comparison other, even though this other’s racist behaviors were identical to their own. Studies 2a and 2b demonstrate this effect is quite robust and even occurs under social pressure and social consensus conditions in which participants were free to express their racial biases. Thus, it appears that people are less likely to base their racist trait ratings on behavioral evidence when evaluating themselves compared to when they are evaluating another. Taken together, this work provides evidence for the consistency and robustness of self-enhanced social comparisons as applied to the trait domain of racism. Further, this work sheds insight into why people deny they are racist when they act racist.

KEYWORDS:

• Better than average effect
• racism
• self-enhancement
• self-perception
• self-other differences

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Data-availability

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/h7k9p/?view_only=2b0f6b3dbce2430fb41b2b85b27daf75

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://osf.io/h7k9p/?view_only=2b0f6b3dbce2430fb41b2b85b27daf75