Suchergebnisse

Explores the news media's ability to activate racial attitudes via stereotypic portrayals of minorities in common local crime coverage, drawing on data from an experiment in which subjects (N = 289 adults in Los Angeles, CA) were shown no crime story, a story with nonminority suspects, or a story featuring minority suspects. President Bill Clinton's support suffered when any crime story was present, but his support was lowest among those who saw news with minority suspects. Evaluation of Clinton's performance on crime was primed powerfully by exposure to crime news, & this effect was largest when the suspects in the story were nonwhite. Spreading activation to performance on welfare, another "race-coded" issue, was also evident among those exposed to racially stereotypic crime stories. Finally, among whites, exposure to minority suspects boosted the importance of the president's concern for whites as a predictor of his overall support. Results suggest that implicitly racial issues are connected in memory & can be simultaneously activated by common news coverage. The findings prompt further consideration of the political impact of stereotype-reinforcing news. 1 Table, 5 Figures, 1 Appendix, 44 References. Adapted from the source document.

Since 2002, 26 U.S. states have passed laws that enhance restrictions on voters who intend to register and vote. Most have been sponsored by Republican legislators and passed by states with large Republican majorities. Proponents of such identification requirements argue that they are necessary to ensure the integrity of the electoral system by reducing voter fraud. Many Democrats have cried foul, arguing these laws are motivated by crass partisanship at best, and racial bias at worst, because they disproportionately disenfranchise minorities. Surprisingly, empirical evidence for significant demobilization, either in the aggregate or among Democrats specifically, has thus far failed to materialize. We suspect strong emotional reactions to the public debate about these laws may mobilize Democrats, counterbalancing the disenfranchising effect. We find support for this conjecture in a nationally representative survey and an experiment where news frames about voter identification (ID) laws are carefully manipulated.

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.