The present work investigated mechanisms by which Whites' prejudice toward Blacks can be reduced (Study 1) and explored how creating a common ingroup identity can reduce prejudice by promoting these processes (Study 2). In Study 1, White participants who viewed a videotape depicting examples of racial discrimination and who imagined the victim's feelings showed greater decreases in prejudice toward Blacks than did those in the objective and no instruction conditions. Among the potential mediating affective and cognitive variables examined, reductions in prejudice were mediated primarily by feelings associated with perceived injustice. In Study 2, an intervention designed to increase perceptions of a common group identity before viewing the videotape, reading that a terrorist threat was directed at all Americans versus directed just at White Americans, also reduced prejudice toward Blacks through increases in feelings of injustice.

Within the United States, declines in the overt expression of racial prejudice over several decades have given way to near universal endorsement of the principles of racial equality as a core cultural value. Yet, evidence of persistent and substantial disparities between Blacks and Whites remain. Here, we review research that demonstrates how the actions of even well-intentioned and ostensibly non-prejudiced individuals can inadvertently contribute to these disparities through subtle biases in decision making and social interactions. We argue that current racial attitudes of Whites toward Blacks in the United States are fundamentally ambivalent, characterized by a widespread contemporary form of racial prejudice, aversive racism, that is manifested in subtle and indirect ways, and illustrate its operation across a wide range of settings, from employment and legal decisions, to group problem-solving and everyday helping behavior. We conclude by describing research aimed at combating these biases and identify new avenues for future research.

This article discusses how seemingly well-intended policies and interventions to reduce intergroup bias by emphasizing colorblindness through overarching commonalities between groups may, either unintentionally or strategically, inhibit efforts to address group-based inequities. First, we discuss the roots of bias in social categorization process, and how changing the way people think about group memberships from separate groups to members of the same group with shared identity improves intergroup attitudes. Second, we describe the subtle nature of contemporary biases, which can help obscure group-based inequities. Third, we explain how and why majority and minority groups may have different preferences for recategorization and consider the potential consequences of these different perspectives for recognizing and addressing disparity and discrimination. We conclude by considering the policy and structural implications of these processes for achieving more equitable societies, not only in principle but also in practice.

In the United States, the 1960s and early 1970s were characterized by significant societal changes. The Civil Rights Movement and social, political, and moral forces stimulated these changes to address racism by White Americans toward Black Americans and achieve the nation's historical egalitarian ideals. With the Civil Rights legislation and other federal mandates, it was no longer simply immoral to discriminate against Blacks; it was now also illegal. Surveys and national polls revealed significant reductions in overt expressions of prejudice among Whites toward Blacks (Dovidio & Gartner, 2004). This unprecedented change in race relations in the United States changed the nature of racial attitudes, from blatant to subtle, and consequently the study of prejudice in psychology (Dovidio, 2001). In other countries, similar normative changes have reduced blatant expressions of prejudice while more subtle, yet equally pernicious, forms of bias persist (see Pettigrew & Meertens, 1995). This chapter reviews the development of theory about contemporary forms of racismfocusing primarily on aversive racismtracing the evolution of this perspective, describing key empirical evidence, and identifying productive avenues for future research. We begin by reviewing relations among different theories of subtle contemporary racism, including aversive racism, and then discuss work on implicit prejudice and its relationship to aversive racism. We then consider the implications of aversive racism for interventions to reduce bias and identify promising new directions for research on contemporary racism, in general, and aversive racism, in particular.

Empathy has received increasing empirical attention in the study of intergroup relations. Much of this research has focused on the potential of interventions that generate empathy for improving intergroup attitudes and reducing intergroup bias. Specifically, this work typically explores how empathy mediates the effects of various manipulations, such as direct instructions to imagine how an outgroup member feels on participants' attitudes toward the outgroup as a whole. In this chapter, we offer complementary perspectives on the role of empathy in intergroup relations. In addition, we examine other potential roles of empathy in intergroup relations, considering the direct impact of intergroup empathy on behavior and how intergroup attitudes can moderate the arousal of empathy and its subsequent intergroup impact.We consider three perspectives on the relations among empathy, intergroup attitudes, and group membership. Our goal is not to test these as corn-Preparation of this chapter was supported by NSF Grant #BCS-0613218 awarded to the first and third authors.

In a nationally representative survey experiment, diverse segments of the US public underestimated the environmental concerns of nonwhite and low-income Americans and misperceived them as lower than those of white and more affluent Americans. Moreover, both whites and nonwhites and higher- and lower-income respondents associated the term “environmentalist” with whites and the well-educated, suggesting that shared cultural stereotypes may drive these misperceptions. This environmental belief paradox—a tendency to misperceive groups that are among the most environmentally concerned and most vulnerable to a wide range of environmental impacts as least concerned about the environment—was largely invariant across demographic groups and also extended to the specific issue of climate change. Suggesting these beliefs are malleable, exposure to images of a racially diverse (vs. nondiverse) environmental organization in an embedded randomized experiment reduced the perceived gap between whites’ and nonwhites’ environmental concerns and strengthened associations between nonwhites and the category “environmentalists” among minority respondents. These findings suggest that stereotypes about others’ environmental attitudes may pose a barrier to broadening public engagement with environmental initiatives, particularly among populations most vulnerable to negative environmental impacts.

Interest in the audience factors that shape the processing of climate change messaging has risen over the past decade, as evidenced by dozens of studies demonstrating message effects that are contingent on audiences’ political values, ideological worldviews, and cultural mindsets. Complementing these efforts is a growing interest in understanding the role of nonpartisan social factors—including racial and ethnic identities, social class, and gender—that have received comparably less attention but are critical for understanding how the challenges posed by climate change can be effectively communicated in pluralistic societies. Research and theory on the effects of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status (education and income), and gender on climate change perceptions suggest that each of these factors can independently and systematically shape people’s attitudes and beliefs about climate change, as well as both individual and collective motivations to address it. Moreover, the literature suggests that these factors often interact with political orientation (ideology and party affiliation) such that climate change beliefs and risk perceptions are typically more polarized for members of advantaged groups than disadvantaged groups. Notably, differential polarization in the perceived dangers posed by climate change has increased in some group dimensions (e.g., race and income) from 2000 to 2010. Groups for whom the issue of climate change may be less politically charged, such as racial and ethnic minorities and members of socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, thus represent critical audiences for bridging growing partisan divides and building policy consensus. Nevertheless, critical knowledge gaps remain. In particular, few studies have examined effects of race or ethnicity beyond the U.S. context or explored ways in which race, ethnicity, class, and gender may interact to influence climate change engagement. Increasing attention to these factors, as well as the role of diversity more generally in environmental communication, can enhance understanding of key barriers to broadening public participation in climate discourse and decision-making.

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