On the precipice of a “majority-minority” America: Perceived status threat from the racial demographic shift affects White Americans' political ideology

MA Craig, JA Richeson - Psychological science, 2014 - journals.sagepub.com
MA Craig, JA Richeson
Psychological science, 2014journals.sagepub.com
The US Census Bureau projects that racial minority groups will make up a majority of the US
national population in 2042, effectively creating a so-called majority-minority nation. In four
experiments, we explored how salience of such racial demographic shifts affects White
Americans' political-party leanings and expressed political ideology. Study 1 revealed that
making California's majority-minority shift salient led politically unaffiliated White Americans
to lean more toward the Republican Party and express greater political conservatism …
The U.S. Census Bureau projects that racial minority groups will make up a majority of the U.S. national population in 2042, effectively creating a so-called majority-minority nation. In four experiments, we explored how salience of such racial demographic shifts affects White Americans’ political-party leanings and expressed political ideology. Study 1 revealed that making California’s majority-minority shift salient led politically unaffiliated White Americans to lean more toward the Republican Party and express greater political conservatism. Studies 2, 3a, and 3b revealed that making the changing national racial demographics salient led White Americans (regardless of political affiliation) to endorse conservative policy positions more strongly. Moreover, the results implicate group-status threat as the mechanism underlying these effects. Taken together, this work suggests that the increasing diversity of the nation may engender a widening partisan divide.
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