Suchergebnisse

Young and colleagues' recent article substantially contributes to the understanding of multiracial perception generally and in the context of affirmative action. Their introduction of socioeconomic status as a relevant factor in the perception of Latino‐White biracials highlights our need for additional research identifying which target characteristics and perceiver motives influence the perception of multiracials and under what conditions these relationships occur. We outline how future research can incorporate and expand on Young et al.'s work to better understand multiracial person perception and specify the most appropriate contexts in which these findings could be applied by practitioners.

The current research tested whether the passing of government legislation, signaling the prevailing attitudes of the local majority, was associated with changes in citizens' attitudes. Specifically, with ∼1 million responses over a 12-y window, we tested whether state-by-state same-sex marriage legislation was associated with decreases in antigay implicit and explicit bias. Results across five operationalizations consistently provide support for this possibility. Both implicit and explicit bias were decreasing before same-sex marriage legalization, but decreased at a sharper rate following legalization. Moderating this effect was whether states passed legislation locally. Although states passing legislation experienced a greater decrease in bias following legislation, states that never passed legislation demonstrated increased antigay bias following federal legalization. Our work highlights how government legislation can inform individuals' attitudes, even when these attitudes may be deeply entrenched and socially and politically volatile.