Emotional Substrates of White Racial Attitudes

Abstract

A steep decline in biologically based racial animus over the past four decades has not led to a softening of opposition to race-conscious policies such as affirmative action. One explanation for this is that a new racial belief system-referred to as symbolic racism or racial resentment-has replaced "old-fashioned racism." Another is that nonracial values such as ideology and a preference for small government now drive policy opinions. Our theory suggests that whereas disgust once accompanied ideas about "biologically inferior" groups, anger has become fused to conservative ideas about race in the contemporary period. As a result, anger now serves as the primary emotional trigger of whites' negative racial attitudes. We experimentally induce disgust, anger, or fear using an apolitical task and find anger is uniquely powerful at boosting opposition to racially redistributive policies among white racial conservatives. Nonracial attitudes such as ideology and small government preference are not activated by any of these negative emotions.A steep decline over the past 40 years in the belief that blacks are biologically different than, and inferior to, whites (Schuman et al. 1997) has not been accompanied by an increase in support for public policies intended to promote equal opportunity, such as affirmative action. A collection of "new racism" theories-including symbolic racism (Sears and Kinder 1971), racial resentment (Kinder and Sanders 1996), and modern racism (McConahay and Hough 1976; referred to hereafter as SR)-acknowledges that whites' "oldfashioned racism" (OFR) has genuinely receded over time in both prevalence and influence. In its place, a new racial belief system has emerged, rooted in an organic synthesis of antiblack affect and the sense that blacks violate cherished American values such as individualism (Kinder and Sanders 1996;Sears and Henry 2003).The politics-centered approach (Sniderman, Crosby, and Howell 2000), on the other hand, insists these new racism theories overestimate the role of racial animus. Instead, they argue, race-neutral values (RNV) regarding the proper size and role of government, political ideology, and individualism drive racial policy opinions. This

Fear, Anger, and Voting for the Far Right: Evidence From the November 13, 2015 Paris Terror Attacks

“…These include economic conditions (Rico et al, ; Wagner, ), their country’s membership in supranational political institutions such as the EU (Vasilopoulou & Wagner, ), legislative acts (Valentino & Neuer, ), media content (MacKuen et al, ; Marcus et al, ) or politicians (Marcus & MacKuen, ; Marcus et al, ; Ragsdale, ). Other research has illustrated that fear and anger stemming from stimuli unrelated to politics also shape political decision making (Banks, ; Banks & Valentino, ). Consequently, we anticipate that the findings of this study may well be generalized in contexts other than terrorist threat.…”

“…We propose that it is public anger, rather than anxiety, that motivates support for the far-right vote. While many may indeed react to economic uncertainty, terrorism, and immigration with anxiety, the nature of these threats-often blamed by elites on disliked groups who violate cherished societal norms-is also likely to trigger anger (Banks, 2014;Banks & Valentino, 2012;Lambert et al, 2010;MacKuen, Wolak, Keele, & Marcus, 2010;Marcus, Neuman, & MacKuen, 2000;Valentino, Brader, Groenendyk, Gregorowicz, & Hutchings, 2011).…”

How Emotional Frames Moralize and Polarize Political Attitudes

“…However, disgust plays an important role in attitudes toward immigration (Aarøe, Bang Petersen, & Arceneaux, 2017), sexuality, (e.g., Gadarian & van der Vort, 2017;Miller et al, 2017), vaccination (Clay, 2016), and a variety of other topics involving health or group attitudes (e.g., Kam & Estes, 2016). And anger, which is likely to be elicited by concerns about harm or injustice, should be easy to stimulate for a wide variety of topics, such as terrorism (Lerner et al, 2003), intergroup attitudes (Banks & Valentino, 2012), and social welfare (Petersen et al, 2012). Thus, it seems likely that emotional frames can further moralize a wide variety of issues, but this remains an empirical question.…”

The Political Mobilization of Ethnic and Religious Identities in Africa

“…For these reasons, priming experiments have gained traction and have proven to be an effective means of varying inputs in other political studies (Banks and Valentino 2012;Iyengar, Peters, and Kinder 1982;Sachs 2010;Weber and Thorton 2012). 17 Trials were conducted between January and June 2009.…”