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Six studies show that majority members misperceive diversity policies as unbeneficial to their ingroup, even when policies benefit them. Majority members perceived nonzero-sum university admission policies-policies that increase acceptance of both URM (i.e., underrepresented minority) and non-URM applicants-as harmful to their ingroup when merely framed as "diversity" policies. Even for policies lacking a diversity framing (i.e., "leadership" policies), majority members misperceived that their ingroup would not benefit when policies provided relatively greater benefit to URMs, but not when they provided relatively greater benefit to non-URMs. No consistent evidence emerged that these effects were driven by ideological factors: Majority members' misperceptions occurred even when accounting for self-reported beliefs around diversity, hierarchy, race, and politics. Instead, we find that majority group membership itself predicts misperceptions, such that both Black and White participants accurately perceive nonzero-sum diversity policies as also benefiting the majority when participants are represented as members of the minority group. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Nine preregistered studies (n= 4197) demonstrate that advantaged group members misperceive equality as necessarily harming their access to resources and inequality as necessarily benefitting them. Only when equality is increased within their ingroup, instead of between groups, do advantaged group members accurately perceive it as unharmful. Misperceptions persist when equality-enhancing policies offer broad benefits to society or when resources, and resource access, are unlimited. A longitudinal survey of the 2020 U.S. voters reveals that harm perceptions predict voting against actual equality-enhancing policies, more so than voters’ political and egalitarian beliefs. Finally two novel-groups experiments experiments reveal that advantaged participants’ harm misperceptions predict voting for inequality-enhancing policies that financially hurt them and against equality-enhancing policies that financially benefit them. Misperceptions persist even after an intervention to improve decision-making. This misperception that equality is necessarily zero-sum may explain why inequality prevails even as it incurs societal costs that harm everyone.

Four studies present the first broad investigation into identity threats experienced in everyday life. Capturing more than 17,000 instances of identity threat experienced by more than 1,500 participants, we demonstrate that a lack of felt belonging and exclusion are distinct aspects of identity threats. Experiences of reduced belonging most strongly relate to feelings of inauthenticity, whereas experiences of exclusion most strongly relate to negative affect (sadness and anger). Furthermore, experiences with identity threats were related to loneliness, lower life satisfaction, and worse self-reported physical health (with reduced belonging and exclusion predicting distinct measures of well-being), and both aspects predict lower workplace satisfaction, identification and commitment when experienced in professional settings. By distinguishing feelings of reduced belonging from exclusion, we provide unique insights into affective and cognitive outcomes of identity threats experienced in everyday life across diverse marginalized identities.

We test a novel framework for how ingroup members are perceived during intergroup interaction. Across three experiments, we found that, above and beyond egalitarian attitudes and motivations, White observers’ automatic responses to Blacks (i.e., their implicit anti-Black bias) shaped their affiliation toward ingroup targets who appeared comfortable engaging in interracial versus same-race interaction. White observers’ implicit anti-Black bias negatively correlated with liking of White targets who were comfortable with Blacks (Experiments 1-3). The relationship between implicit bias and liking varied as a function of targets’ nonverbal comfort in interracial interactions (Experiment 1). Specifically, implicit bias negatively correlated with liking of targets when targets’ nonverbal behaviors revealed observers felt comfortable with interracial contact, irrespective of the nature of those behaviors (Experiment 2). Finally, the relationship between implicit bias and target liking was mediated by perceived similarity (Experiment 3). Theoretical implications for stigma-by-association, social network homogeneity, and extended contact are discussed.

As the workforce becomes increasingly racially diverse, creating spaces to discuss and address issues surrounding racial diversity has become an important aspect of modern organizational life. Howe...

In this article we argue that social-psychological research on implicit racial associations—relatively unconscious associations based on race—is a fruitful area to explore for a greater understanding of how racial bias affects children in schools. We highlight the key insights of research on implicit racial associations and their implications for education. Further, we identify areas for research on implicit racial associations in education, calling for collaboration between scholars of racial inequality in education and scholars of implicit racial associations. This research is likely to provide a productive new perspective for understanding why and when teachers and other school personnel engage in behaviors that reproduce racial inequality, often in spite of best intentions and commitments to racial equity.

White Americans' manner of expressing egalitarianism may inadvertently communicate racial prejudices to ingroup members. Despite most hypothesizing the contrary (Preliminary Study), White American perceivers were able to infer ingroup targets' underlying racial attitudes using only targets' written claims of being egalitarian (Experiment 1; N = 256) and regardless of whether targets had the goal to be honest or as unprejudiced as possible (Experiment 2; N = 456). A Brunswikian lens analysis identified several linguistic cues associated with perceiver accuracy. Language humanizing Black Americans was especially strongly associated with both targets' underlying attitudes and perceivers' inferences of targets' underlying attitudes. Experiment 3 (N = 811) revealed that White Americans' egalitarian statements communicate racial attitudes in an epidemiological sense: Perceivers reported higher racial prejudice after being exposed to egalitarian statements from targets higher, versus lower, in underlying prejudice, regardless of whether perceiver and target had congruent or incongruent political identifications. Therefore, egalitarian declarations may ironically perpetuate inegalitarian attitudes.

We posit instructors' implicit racial bias as a factor in racial disparities in academic achievement and test the relationship between this factor, instructor lesson quality, and learners' subsequent test performance. In Study 1, white participants were assigned to the role of instructor and gave a short lesson to a learner who was either black or white. Instructors' implicit bias predicted diminished test performance on the part of black, but not white, learners. Further, instructors' anxiety and lesson quality, as rated by coders, mediated the relationship between their implicit bias and learners' test performance. In Study 2, a separate sample of non-black participants watched videos of instructors from cross-race lessons from the first experiment. Once again, instructors' implicit bias predicted diminished test performance by participants. These findings suggest that underperformance by minorities in academic domains may be driven by the effect implicit racial biases have on educators' pedagogical effectiveness.

We tested a novel process we term implicit homophily in which perceivers' implicit outgroup bias shapes their affiliative responses toward ingroup targets with outgroup friends as a function of perceived similarity. Across 4 studies, we tested implicit homophily in the context of racial groups. We found that White participants with higher implicit anti-Black bias reported less affiliative responses toward White targets with Black friends compared with White targets with White friends, and this effect persisted above and beyond the effects of implicit pro-White bias and explicit racial bias (Studies 1-3). We further found evidence that this relationship between implicit anti-Black bias and affiliation exists because participants infer how comfortable targets are around outgroup members (Preliminary Study) and use this information to infer similarity on this dimension (Studies 1-3). Our findings also suggested that stigma transference and expectancy violation were not viable alternative mediators (Preliminary Study and Study 1). Finally, women's implicit anti-Black bias predicted their likelihood of having Facebook friends with Black friends, providing ecological and behavioral evidence of implicit homophily (Study 4). Implications for research on stigma by association, extended contact, affiliation, and network formation are discussed.

Implicit racial prejudice is a prevalent form of racial bias less subject to conscious awareness and control, compared with self-reported bias. Implicit pro-White/anti-Black bias has documented negative implications for the lives of African Americans. Guided by a “shared-reality” approach, research shows how implicit prejudice shapes the lives of White Americans. Two basic principles emerge. First, under the right circumstances, Whites’ implicit prejudice decreases to correspond with the apparent egalitarianism of their contacts. Second, although individuals cannot introspect much on it, implicit prejudice predicts Whites’ desire to affiliate with fellow Whites. Specifically, greater implicit prejudice predicts liking other Whites who seem uncomfortable interacting with Blacks. This work has ramifications for policies to mitigate prejudice—such as including own-group strategies—as well as societal implications of social networks saturated with individuals who hold similar degrees of implicit prejudice.

In the United States, the difference in academic achievement between higher- and lower-income students (i.e., the income-achievement gap) is substantial and growing. In the research reported here, we investigated neuroanatomical correlates of this gap in adolescents (N = 58) in whom academic achievement was measured by statewide standardized testing. Cortical gray-matter volume was significantly greater in students from higher-income backgrounds (n = 35) than in students from lower-income backgrounds (n = 23), but cortical white-matter volume and total cortical surface area did not differ significantly between groups. Cortical thickness in all lobes of the brain was greater in students from higher-income than lower-income backgrounds. Greater cortical thickness, particularly in temporal and occipital lobes, was associated with better test performance. These results represent the first evidence that cortical thickness in higher- and lower-income students differs across broad swaths of the brain and that cortical thickness is related to scores on academic-achievement tests., Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant F32 HD079143-01), National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant F32 MH095354-01)