While much work in political science has examined the impact of racial cues on individual perceptions, we know little about how individuals evaluate members of minority outgroups on issues that are not linked to stereotypes. We measure the impacts of Hispanic and White cues on individual assessments related to a stereotype-independent norm violation: alcoholism. We test three competing theories – cognition, intergroup emotions, and social identity – using a population-based vignette experiment included in the General Social Survey. Our results contradict much of the literature, but keep with social identity theory's predictions. Hispanic alcoholics, when Hispanics constitute the outgroup, are assessed less negatively than White alcoholics in the ingroup, the latter experiencing what is called the black sheep effect. The black sheep effect occurs when ingroup members are more punitive towards members of the ingroup than the outgroup. However, the black sheep effect does not extend to measures that are more consistent with outgroup stereotypes, such as violence or money mismanagement; Hispanic alcoholics are evaluated more negatively than Whites on these measures. The implication is that the effect of racial cues depends strongly on issue linkages to group stereotypes.
References
[1]
Brader T, Valentino NA, Suhay E (2008) What triggers public opposition to immigration? anxiety, group cues, and immigration threat. American Journal of Political Science 52: 959–978.
[2]
Federico C (2005) Racial perceptions and evaluative responses to welfare: Does education attenuate race-of-target effects? Political Psychology 26: 683–697.
[3]
Gilliam FD, Iyengar S (2000) Prime suspects: The inuence of local television news on the viewing public. American Journal of Political Science 44: 560–573.
[4]
Glaser J (2002) White voters, black schools: Structuring racial choices with a checklist ballot. American Journal of Political Science 46: 35–46.
[5]
Huber GA, Lapinski JS (2006) The “race card” revisited: Assessing racial priming in policy con-tests. American Journal of Political Science 50: 421–440.
[6]
Mendelberg T (2001) The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
[7]
Mendelberg T (2008) Racial priming: Issues in research design and interpretation. Perspectives on Politics 6: 135–140.
[8]
Mendelberg T (2008) Racial priming revived. Perspectives on Politics 6: 109–123.
[9]
Newman BJ, Hartman TK, Taber CS (2012) Foreign language exposure, cultural threat, and opposition to immigration. Political Psychology 33: 635–657.
[10]
Valentino NA, Hutchings VL, White IK (2002) Cues that matter: How political ads prime racial attitudes during campaigns. American Political Science Review 96: 75–90.
[11]
Gilens M (1996) “race coding” and white opposition to welfare. American Political Science Review 90: 593–604.
[12]
Hurwitz J, Peffey M (1997) Public perceptions of race and crime: The role of racial stereotypes. American Journal of Political Science 41: 375–401.
[13]
Abrams D, Rutland A, Ferrell JM, Pelletier J (2008) Childrens judgments of disloyal and immoral peer behavior: Subjective group dynamics in minimal intergroup contexts. Child Development 79: 444–461.
[14]
Marques JM, Abrams D, Serdio RG (2001) Being better by being right: Subjective group dynamics and derogation of in-group deviants when generic norms are undermined. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81: 436–447.
[15]
Matthews D, Dietz-Uhler B (1998) The black-sheep effect: How positive and negative advertisements affect voters perceptions of the sponsor of the advertisement. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 28: 1903–1915.
[16]
Peffey M, Hurwitz J (2002) The racial components of “race-neutral” crime policy attitudes. Political Psychology 23: 59–75.
[17]
Cottrell CA, Neuberg SL (2005) Different emotional reactions to different groups: A sociofunctional threat-based approach to “prejudice”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88: 770–789.
[18]
Parker Tapias M, Glaser J, Keltner D, Vasquez K, Wickens T (2007) Emotion and prejudice: Specific emotions toward outgroups. Group Processes Intergroup Relations 10: 27–39.
[19]
Tajfel H, Turner J (1979) An integrative theory of intergroup conict. In: Austin W, Wochel S, editors, The social psychology of intergroup relations. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
[20]
Branscombe NR, Wann DL, Noel JG, Coleman J (1993) In-group or out-group extremity: Importance of the threatened social identity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 19: 381–388.
[21]
Pescosolido BA, Martin JK, Long J, Medina T, Phelan J, et al.. (1996) Public report on the macarthur mental health module. Technical report, General Social Survey.
[22]
Pescosolido BA, Martin JK, Long J, Medina T, Phelan J, et al. (2010) “A disease like any other?” a decade of change in public reactions to schizophrenia, depression, and alcohol dependence. American Journal of Psychiatry 167: 1321–1330.
[23]
Kantor GK (1997) Alcohol and spouse abuse: Ethnic differences. In: Galanter M, editor, Recent Developments in Alcoholism. New York: Plenum Press, volume 13: Alcoholism and Violence.
[24]
Mutz D (2011) Population-Based Survey Experiments. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
[25]
Petersen M (2010) Distinct emotions, distinct domains: Anger, anxiety and perceptions of intentionality. Journal of Politics 72: 357–365.
[26]
Short JF (1997) Poverty, Ethnicity, and Violent Crime. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
[27]
Huddy L, Feldman S, Cassese E (2007) On the distinct political effects of anger and anxiety. In: Neumann R, Marcus G, Crigler A, MacKuen M, editors. The Affect Effect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 202–230.
[28]
Sidanius J, Pratto F (1999) Social Dominance Theory: A New Synthesis. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
[29]
Singer E, Couper MP, Raghunathan TE, Antonucci TC, Burmeister M, et al. (2010) The effect of question framing and response options on the relationship between racial attitudes and beliefs about genes as causes of behavior. Public Opinion Quarterly 74: 460–476.
[30]
Civettini A, Redlawsk DP (2009) Voters, emotions, and memory. Political Psychology 30: 125–151.
[31]
Greenwald AG, McGhee DE, Schwartz JLK (1998) Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74: 1464–1480.
[32]
Gilliam FD, Valentino NA, Beckmann MN (2002) Where you live and what you watch: The impact of racial proximity and local television news on attitudes about race and crime. Political Research Quarterly 55: 755–780.
