Whites' racial attitudes have become complex, with feelings of friendliness and rejection toward Black people often existing side by side. We believe these conflicting sentiments are rooted in two largely independent, core value orientations of American culture, hutnanitarianism-egalitarianism and the Protestant work ethic. We devised four scales, Pro-Black, Anti-Black, Protestant Ethic (PE), and Humanitarianism-Egalitarianism (HE). In Study 1, the scales were given to White students at eight colleges. As predicted, significant positive correlations were usually found between Pro-Black and HE scores and between Anti-Black and PE scores, whereas other correlations tended to be much lower. In Study 2, we used a priming technique with White students to test for causality. As predicted, priming a given value raised scores on the theoretically corresponding attitude but did not affect scores on the other attitude; priming a single attitude influenced scores on the corresponding value, but not on the other value. Implications are discussed.The main finding from 40 years of survey research is that racial attitudes currently expressed by White Americans are far more liberal than the views they once held (Lipset & Schneider, 1978;Schuman, Steeh, & Bobo, 1985;Smith & Sheatsley, 1984). Public opinion has shifted from widespread acceptance of segregation and discrimination in the 1940s to a broad national consensus in support of racial equality and integration.The favorable temporal trends are more apparent for survey items that deal with civil rights principles than for items about concrete policies for implementing the principles. Nonetheless, many important remedies have received popular support. Some experts take the position that White people's opposition to policies such as mandatory school busing and use of job quotas is proof that their commitment to change in the status quo is superficial and conceals a fundamental prejudice against

The medical need for human organs suitable for use as transplants far exceed the supply, and is growing. More favorable attitudes about organ donation would increase people's willingness to sign posthumous donation pledges. But effective educational programs require information about the public's present views. Verbal attitude scales were constructed and administered to 110 adults, resulting in reliable measurement of two independent dimensions, prodonation and antidonation (r = .003). Cluster analysis of the instrument revealed that the positive dimension involves belief in the humanitarian benefits of organ donation and feelings of pride experienced by the donor. The negative dimension reflects fears of body mutilation and of receiving inadequate medical treatment when one's life is at risk. Pro and anti scores in combination predicted willingness to sign a donor card. A 2 X 2 analysis of variance (High-Low Positive X High-Low Negative) revealed significant main effects for both positive and negative attitude. Also, a significant interaction effect was obtained. Those subjects who had both strong positive attitudes and weak negative attitudes were especially willing to sign donor cards. Suggestions for designing educational campaigns to promote organ donation are offered.

Many White people simultaneously hold both sympathetic and antagonistic attitudes toward Blacks. The present research found that activation of these conflicted racial attitudes gives rise to psychological tension and discomfort, as evidenced by negative mood change, and that the amount of discomfort depends on individual differences in measured ambivalence. The salience of Mite subjects' racial attitudes was manipulated by exposing half the subjects to controversial statements about a recent local incident of racial violence; the other half read neutral material Before and after this manipulation, subjects took a mood test disguised as a subliminal perception task. Subjects in the high-salience condition showed significantly more negative mood change. This effect was carried by high-salience subjects who were also relatively high on dispositional racial ambivalence, as measured by a questionnaire. Ambivalence was unrelated to mood in the control condition. A second study showed that merely completing the questionnaire was not sufficient to produce negative mood change.

Previous research has suggested that Whites' evaluations of Blacks who are presented positively or negatively tend to be more extreme than evaluations of similar White targets. In Study 1, White subjects rated a Black or White confederate who was responsible for success or failure at a joint task. There was a clear cross-race polarization of evaluations. Study 2 tested two possible explanations of the polarization phenomenon-the authors' ambivalence formulation and Linville and Jones's cognitive complexity hypothesis. As hypothesized, ambivalence was directly related to favorability of impression ratings in the success condition. In the failure condition, the correlation was in the predicted inverse direction but was not significant. The difference between the two correlations, as expected, was significant. No support was obtained for the cognitive complexity hypothesis. Rather, in the failure condition complexity was directly related to the unfavorability of ratings, contrary to the hypothesis.