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Social desirability is generally thought to underlie the propensity for survey respondents to tailor their answers to what they think would satisfy or please the interviewer. While this may in fact be the underlying motivation, especially on attitudinal and opinion questions, social desirability does not seem to be an adequate explanation for interviewer effects on factual questions. Borrowing from the social psychology literature on stereotype threat, we test an alternative account of the race‐of‐interviewer effects. Stereotype threat maintains that the pressure to disconfirm and to avoid being judged by negative and potentially degrading stereotypes interferes with the processing of information. We argue that the survey context contains many parallels to a testing environment in which stereotype threat might alter responses to factual questions. Through a series of framing experiments in a public opinion survey and the reliance on the sensitivity to the race of the interviewer, our results are consistent with expectations based on a theory of "stereotype threat." African American respondents to a battery of questions about political knowledge get fewer answers right when interviewed by a white interviewer than when interviewed by an African American interviewer. The observed differences in performance on the political knowledge questions cannot be accounted for by differences in the educational background or gender of the respondents.

Examines extent to which a Black nationalist belief system is associated with intolerance, mistrust, and disaffection toward others; includes perceptions of racism and political strategies.

AbstractThis research examines the extent to which negative attitudes toward African Americans influence public reactions to restoring political rights to felons. We argue that race-neutral policies, such as felon disenfranchisement laws, are non-separable from racial considerations, as images of criminals and felons are typically associated with Blacks. Such attitudes produce collateral consequences for felons, hampering the restoration of their full political rights and, ultimately, their citizenship. Predispositions, such as racial attitudes and political ideology, provide both racial and nonracial justifications for supporting these laws, yet, there are no empirical accounts of their relational effects on opinion toward felons' rights. Using nationally representative survey data, we find that racialized resentment and ideology exert the most influence on the reactions to policies seeking political rights for felons as well as beliefs about the value of doing so. Consistent with much of the literature on attitudes toward ameliorative racial policies, higher levels of racial resentment strongly predict lower support for felons' political rights among both conservatives and liberals, yet, racial resentment is most influential among liberals. Conservatives exhibit the highest levels of racial resentment, but its impact is depressed more by agreement on both racial attitudes and opposition to political rights of felons.

Attempts to explain whites' paradoxical support for principles of racial equality & intransigence on social policies aimed at rectifying racial inequities. A multivariate model is used to explore the effects of racial prejudice, beliefs about racial discrimination, stratification beliefs, & self-interest on whites' attitudes toward racial policies, based on data from the 1990 General Social Survey & the 1986 American National Election Study. Class positions were not found to be important determinants of whites' attitudes regarding race-targeted social policy. However, recognition of continuing racial discrimination, structuralist attributions of the causes of racial inequality, & group self-interest all played a significant part in determining whites' views of race-targeted policies. It is concluded that educational programs aimed at demonstrating the legacy of past & present discrimination & the effects of structured inequality can improve the prospects for successful policy interventions. 3 Tables, 1 Appendix, 40 References. Adapted from the source document.