RACIAL STEREOTYPES AND WHITES POLITICAL VIEWS OF BLACKS IN THE CONTEXT OF WELFARE AND CRIME

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.