M. Peffley et al., RACIAL STEREOTYPES AND WHITES POLITICAL VIEWS OF BLACKS IN THE CONTEXT OF WELFARE AND CRIME, American journal of political science, 41(1), 1997, pp. 30-60
Theory: Social psychological theories of social stereotyping are used
to generate a series of predictions about how and when whites' stereot
ypes of African-Americans are likely to bias their evaluations of blac
ks in the areas of welfare and crime, Hypotheses: The degree to which
whites endorse negative stereotypes of blacks not only tends to bias t
heir judgments of black (versus white) welfare recipients and criminal
suspects, but also affects the way they respond to counter-stereotypi
cal information about the target. Methods: Regression analysis and ana
lysis of variance of data from a series of survey experiments with 1,8
41 whites in which the race and other attributes of welfare mothers, w
elfare recipients, and drug suspects were manipulated. Results: Whites
holding negative stereotypes are substantially more likely to judge b
lacks more harshly than similarly described whites in the areas of wel
fare and crime policy. We also find that even whites with strongly neg
ative perceptions of blacks respond quite favorably to them when confr
onted with individuating information that clearly contradicts their st
ereotype. By way of contrast, respondents who reject negative stereoty
pes of African-Americans display a remarkable consistency in their res
ponses across both the race and the individuating information of the t
arget.