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Attitudes towards biculturalism in New Zealand: Social dominance and Pakeha attitudes towards the general principles and resource-specific aspects of bicultural policy
Abstract
Two studies examined Pakeha (New Zealanders of European descent) attitudes towards biculturalism in New Zealand. In Study one, Pakeha who were lower in Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) expressed increased support for an affirmative action policy providing postgraduate scholarships for ethnic minorities only in the absence of material self-interest (i.e., only when they themselves would not be competing for scholarships). In contrast, Pakeha higher in SDO opposed this policy regardless of self-interest. Study two used qualitative responses evoked in the first study to develop a scale distinguishing between attitudes towards (a) biculturalism in principle (general acceptance of a partnership between Maori (the indigenous peoples of New Zealand) and Pakeha as a central aspect of social representations of New Zealand identity) and (b) resource-specific biculturalism (support for policies to redistribute resources in favour of Maori on a categorical basis). In Study two, a majority of Pakeha students supported biculturalism in principle (53% support, 3% opposition) but were opposed to resource-specific biculturalism (3% support, 76% opposition). As expected, SDO moderated this effect. Pakeha low in SDO (and to a lesser extent Right-Wing Authoritarianism) supported biculturalism in principle; however, they were relatively opposed to resource-specific biculturalism regardless of SDO. Consistent with integrated threat theory, we argue that symbolic threats to identity and values must be distinguished from realistic threats to material interests, especially in contexts like New Zealand where biculturalism is part of the national ideology for governance. This distinction is critical for understanding how values, such as group equality, influence perceptions of policy relating to minority-majority group relations.
... La asimetría de estatus y de poder entre los pueblos Indígenas y no-Indígenas constituye la raíz de una serie de conflictos en torno a problemas de naturaleza realista y simbólicos (Osborne et al. 2017, Satherley & Sibley 2018, Sibley & Liu 2004. Los factores contextuales han influido en el modo en que los pueblos Indígenas y no-Indígenas se relacionan entre sí y cómo las percepciones (estereotipos y prejuicios) y los comportamientos (discriminación), exhibidos particularmente por miembros de los grupos mayoritarios no-Indígenas hacia las personas Indígenas, han alimentado los conflictos durante varios siglos. ...
... Basándose en el análisis que realizaron Sibley & Liu (2004) acerca de las actitudes Pākehā hacia el biculturalismo Māori, demostraron que las ideologías de negación histórica y de exclusión simbólica tienen efectos negativos sobre el apoyo a las políticas sociales relacionadas con el biculturalismo. En la misma línea, Yogeeswaran et al. (2018) confirmaron el impacto negativo que genera una ideología integracionista, estimulada por creencias que justifican el sistema, tanto en los niveles de apoyo a políticas que reparan las desigualdades, como en la inclusión simbólica de la cultura Māori en la identidad nacional. ...
La pregunta sobre la existencia de características comunes inherentes a la psicología de los pueblos Indígenas de todo el mundo ha sido objeto de mucho debate. Nosotros argumentamos que los pueblos Indígenas comparten la experiencia de la colonización, así como sus consecuencias sociales y psicológicas. Desarrollamos este argumento en cuatro secciones: ( a) La historia global de la colonización y las desigualdades sociales; ( b) aspectos relativos a la identidad y los procesos grupales, incluidas la transmisión intergeneracional de valores compartidos, la conexión con la naturaleza y la promoción del cambio social; ( c) el prejuicio y la discriminación hacia los pueblos Indígenas y el rol que juegan los procesos psicológicos para promover relaciones positivas entre los pueblos Indígenas y no-Indígenas; y ( d) el impacto del trauma histórico y del colonialismo en la cognición, la salud mental y el bienestar de los pueblos Indígenas, así como la base para el desarrollo de intervenciones exitosas que integran los conocimientos Indígenas. Por último, abordamos los desafíos futuros de la investigación sobre estos temas.
... There are many challenges to biculturalism, and it is often oversimplified, overlooking issues of power and oppression. While ideologically many support biculturalism, some promote a "we are all one Aotearoa" stance-a veiled attempt ensuring Pākehā cultural dominance (Sibley & Liu, 2004). ...
The multifaceted context of Aotearoa / New Zealand offers insight into the negotiation of cultural discourses in mental health. There, bicultural practice has emerged as a theoretically rights-based delivery of culturally responsive and aligned therapies. Bicultural practices invite clinicians into spaces between Indigenous and Westernized knowing to negotiate and innovate methods of healing. In this article, we present findings from a qualitative study based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork. Drawing on negotiated spaces theory and critical interactionism, we report results of a situational analysis of interviews conducted with 30 service providers working within the bicultural mental health system. Through iterative map-making, we chart the discursive positions taken in the negotiated spaces between Indigenous and Western lifeworlds. In total, we identified five major positions of negotiated practices within the institutionalized discourses that constitute bicultural mental health. Findings indicate that negotiations from Westernized systems of care have been, at best, superficial and that monoculturalism continues to dominate within the bicultural framework. Implications are made for genuine engagement in the negotiated spaces, so treatment has resonance for clients living in multi-cultural, yet Western-dominant societies.
... The significant relation between SDO and symbolic threats provides further empirical support for analyzing SDO as predictor of symbolic threats (Costello & Hodson, 2011;Crowson, 2009;Esses, Hodson, & Dovidio, 2003;Sibley & Liu, 2004). ...
Islamophobia has become a major social issue both in Europe and in the United States (Bleich, 2011; Hafez, 2014; Helbling, 2012; Strabac & Listhaug, 2008). Through different research vehicles and global polling studies, Gallup has collected a great deal of data detailing public opinion about various aspects of respect, treatment, and tolerance with respect to Muslims worldwide. The data show that Islamophobia has increased in frequency and prevalence during the past decade (Gallup World, 2013). Germany is no exception in this regard (Decker, Kiess & Brähler, 2016). Accordingly, hostile and violent actions against Muslims and Islamic facilities have increased in several European countries (Brauns, 2012; The Guardian, 2016). Nevertheless, systematic empirical studies addressing Islamophobia in Germany are scarcely found (de Nève, 2013). Yet the empirical analysis of Islamophobia is crucial for practical and theoretical purposes. In-depth knowledge of the extent, forms, and possible causes of Islamophobia is essential for developing countermeasures to mitigate the negative consequences.
The overall aim of my PhD study is to contribute to ongoing academic discussions surrounding the topic of Islamophobia from social and political psychology perspectives. As a whole, the research project aims at systematically analyzing the structure, consequences, and some social, political, and psychological mechanisms of Islamophobia in Germany. Broadly speaking, my research addresses overarching questions such as: What is Islamophobia? What are the social, political, and psychological underpinnings that best explain it? And why care about it? Several key issues, including the definition, dimensionality, measurement, operationalization, contributing factors, consequences, and comparability of Islamophobia, are addressed in the four individual papers.
... We caution media and politicians to take care when introducing policies that could be viewed as threatening to the ingroup's economic interests. Sibley and Liu (2004) suggested avoiding framing policies as zero-sum, which positions resources as finite and therefore the intake of refugees to mean taking resources away from existing groups. ...
Some individuals may be internationally displaced by climate change. We surveyed two independent samples of New Zealanders to understand attitudes towards climate aid. Participants were relatively less supportive of financial aid policies, though the majority supported climate refugee policy. We assessed whether those ideological barriers commonly used to predict prejudice and policy support related to this acceptance in meaningful ways. Interestingly, we show that approval or rejection of climate refugee policy was largely predicated on views regarding how hierarchically society ought to be ordered. Our research suggests that those opposing climate refugee policy are motivated by anti-egalitarianism and concerns about their own economic welfare to a greater extent than concerns about differences in culture, values, and norms.
... This reconstructive capacity of collective memory has the potential for challenging the normative way of remembering (Kus et al., 2013). The polemic representations of recent events potentially involve diverse interpretations of the distant past, which may contribute to changes in the hegemonic representations of cultural memory (e.g., Goody & Watt, 1963;Sibley & Liu, 2004). Nonetheless, any understanding of the recent historical past must be aligned with the endorsed cultural memory representations in order to maintain the historical continuity (Connerton, 1989;Jetten & Wohl, 2012). ...
The purpose of the present study is to explore the organization of communicative memory among Hungarians. We were also interested in the factors possibly influencing the composition of communicative memory, such as conspiracy beliefs and system justification. The study involved 339 participants who were asked to name the three historical events that have occurred during the lifetime of people they personally knew and had the most significant impact on their country. A latent class analysis was conducted to explore possible associations of event choice with conspiracy beliefs and system justification. The results showed that the most frequently selected events partly corresponded to the Hungarian national historical canon, but progressive events significant on a European scale were also frequently nominated. The latent class analysis revealed two historical profiles. One was characterized by a progressive and Eurocentric view of history, whereas the other showed a canonical historical view with victimhood orientation. The analysis showed that individuals who believe in conspiracy theories were more likely to select events corresponding to the national historical canon, whereas system justification was unrelated to event choice. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of cultural memory and the measured individual constructs in the forming of communicative memory.
... Kuramın temel kavramlarından olan sosyal baskınlık yönelimi ise toplumdaki baskın grupların alt statüdeki gruplara tahakküm etmesini ve hiyerarşik toplum ya-Psikoloji Çalışmaları -Studies in Psychology pısını bireysel olarak desteklemek ve böyle bir toplum yapısını istemek biçiminde tanımlanmaktadır (Sidanius ve Pratto, 1993). Bulgular, bireylerin sosyal baskınlık yönelimlerindeki artışın hiyerarşik toplumsal yapıyı devam ettirebilecek düşünce, ideoloji ve davranışları arttırdığını (Asbrock, Gutenbrunner ve Wagner, 2013;Larsson, Björklund ve Bäckström, 2012;Lee ve ark., 2011;Pratto ve ark., 2013) hiyerarşik yapının önüne geçebilecek düşünce, ideoloji ve davranışları ise azalttığını (Di Meo, 2007;Sibley ve Liu, 2004) ortaya koymaktadır. Örneğin, sosyal baskınlık yöneliminin artması diğer etnik ya da dini gruplara yönelik önyargıyı arttırırken (Lee ve ark., 2011), farklı kültürlerle ya da dezavantajlı gruplarla empati yapma düzeyini azaltmaktadır (Di Meo, 2007;Sidanius ve ark., 2013). ...
Sosyal baskınlık yönelimi (SBY), var olan hiyerarşik yapıları desteklemeye yönelik bireysel bir eğilime karşılık gelmektedir ve son dönemde yürütülen çalışmalar bu kavramın iki faktörlü bir yapıya sahip olduğunu göstermektedir: SBY-Baskınlık (SBY-B) ve SBY-Eşitlik Karşıtı Olma (SBY-EKO). Bu çalışmanın amacı, Ho ve arkadaşlarının (2015) SBY’nin iki faktörlü yapısını ölçmek için geliştirdiği Yeni Sosyal Baskınlık Yönelimi Ölçeği’nin (SBY7 ) Türkçeye uyarlanmasıdır. Bu amaçla, SBY7 iki farklı örneklemden toplam 730 katılımcıya (222 erkek, 507 kadın ve bir boş veri) uygulanmıştır. Ayrıca, Çelişik Duygulu Cinsiyetçilik Ölçeği, Genel Sistemi Meşrulaştırma Ölçeği (örneklem-1), Toplumsal Cinsiyete İlişkin Sistemi Meşrulaştırma Ölçeği (örneklem-2) ve katılımcıların sosyal refahın yeniden sağlanmasını, gelir adaletinin sağlanmasını ve savaşı destekleme düzeylerini belirlemek için oluşturulan Kısa Soru Formu uygulanmıştır. Doğrulayıcı faktör analizi sonuçları, anlamsal ve yöntemsel olarak farklı maddeleri barındıran dört faktörlü bir yapıyı desteklemektedir. Yapı geçerliğine ilişkin bulgular, SBY-Toplam, SBY-B ve SBY-EKO’nun korumacı ve düşmanca cinsiyetçilik ve genel sistemi meşrulaştırma (örneklem-1) ve toplumsal cinsiyete ilişkin sistemi meşrulaştırma (örneklem-2) düzeyleri ile pozitif yönde ilişkili olduğunu göstermektedir. Yapı geçerliğini test etmek için ayrıca SBY-B ve kriter değişkenleri arasındaki yarı-kısmi korelasyonlar ile SBY-EKO ve kriter değişkenleri arasındaki yarı-kısmi korelasyonlar karşılaştırılmıştır. Bulgular, 12 ayrı yarı-kısmi korelasyon farkı karşılaştırmasından yalnızca üçünde anlamlı bir farklılık olduğunu göstermektedir. Bu bulgular, SBY-B ve SBY-EKO arasında, mevcut çalışmada ele alınan kriter değişkenlerini yordama açısından istikrarlı bir farklılaşmanın olmadığına işaret etmektedir. Sonuç olarak, bu çalışmanın sonuçları SBY7 ’nin Türkiye'de sosyal baskınlık yöneliminin anlamsal ve yöntemsel olarak farklı yönlerini barındıran dört faktörlü bir yapıya sahip olduğuna, ancak kuramsal olarak SBY-EKO ve SBY-B’nin ülkemizde belirgin bir şekilde birbirinden ayrışmadığına işaret etmektedir. Bu nedenle, SBY7 ’nin Türkiye’de sosyal baskınlık yöneliminin farklı yönlerini içeren tek faktörlü bir ölçek olarak kullanılabileceği düşünülmektedir.
... It is currently unknown which, if any, demographics (such as gender, age, level of deprivation etc.) might be associated with Māori or Pākehā support for Waitangi Day as a national bicultural celebration. Previous research has shown that Pākehā who rated themselves as having knowledge about te Tiriti were generally accepting of the view that a partnership between Māori and Pākehā is a central aspect of social representations of New Zealand identity or in other words, they were also likely to be supportive of biculturalism in principle (Sibley & Liu, 2004). This might loosely suggest that Pākehā who report a higher education (and perhaps have had more opportunities to learn and know about te Tiriti) might also be supportive of Waitangi Day as a national celebration of biculturalism. ...
Waitangi Day, New Zealand’s official national day, is often claimed as contentious by commentators and academics. However, research analysing the wider population’s opinions about Waitangi Day are lacking. We address this with two studies using national probability data from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study. Most participants supported (51%), rather than opposed (8%), Waitangi Day as a national celebration of biculturalism. Study one indicated that, on average, Pākehā (N = 12390) who opposed Waitangi Day as a bicultural celebration expressed warmer attitudes towards Pākehā but colder attitudes towards Māori. Conversely, support for Waitangi Day as a bicultural celebration among Māori (N = 1928) was, on average, related to warmth towards Māori but uncorrelated with warmth towards Pākehā. Study two assessed whether socio-political attitudes changed in the weeks leading up to, during, and immediately following Waitangi Day in 2015. Contrary to narratives of divisiveness, we failed to detect reliable change in the attitudes of Māori (N = 556) and Pākehā (N = 3203) around Waitangi Day. These findings are inconsistent with anecdotal claims that Waitangi Day may be divisive.
In recent years, awareness of New Zealand’s history of colonial injustice has grown in
national consciousness. This awareness has led to much questioning of history education, particularly New Zealand’s high autonomy curriculum and its capacity to ensure that all young people encounter these ‘difficult’ aspects of the past. Yet little is known about the experiences of secondary school teachers and students during lessons on New Zealand’s history of colonisation. This study aimed to explore how teachers and students engaged with the history of colonisation, including how a sample of effective teachers and their students
confronted the challenges and complexities of these pedagogical encounters. The importance
of understanding this became even more significant when in 2019, the government surprised
many by announcing that New Zealand history will become a compulsory feature of the
curriculum at all levels of school from 2022. This thesis contributes to the new challenge of
implementing compulsory curriculum content by developing a deeper understanding of the
complexities currently experienced by teachers and students during lessons on colonisation.
History education that focuses on historical forms of violence and its representation in
curriculum is commonly referred to as the study of ‘difficult history’ (Epstein & Peck, 2018).
In New Zealand, the early European colonists acquired land from the Indigenous Māori
people resulting in inter-generational forms of suffering, trauma and oppression. In such a
‘settler society’ the history of one’s own nation and its instances of colonial injustice present
challenges because the descendants of the early colonists remain, owning the majority of land
and controlling to a large extent political systems and institutions, including schools. This
thesis extends the research on difficult history by focusing on the challenges of teaching and
learning the history of colonisation in New Zealand, particularly as it relates to the power
dynamics of a settler society. It plays close attention to the pedagogical complexities of place
and emotion and is situated within a broad framework of critical theory which seeks to
explicitly acknowledge the significance of Indigenous systems of knowledge.
Using a mixed method approach, this study presents findings drawn from a survey of teachers
(n=298) and students (n=1889) and a multiple-site case study using qualitative approaches at
four schools. In addition to classrooom based research, the study also investigated students’
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experiences during field trips to places of colonial violence. Data gathering methods included
interviews, semi-structured focus groups, classroom and field trip observations and a studentled photography task.
Analysis of the data showed that history and social studies teachers overwhelmingly
expressed critical views about the nature of colonisation and recognised that, for example,
colonisation reverberates in the present and that its consequences were destructive, primarily
for Māori. Teachers also comprehensively endorsed inquiry-led and discussion-based
pedagogical approaches that were attentive to the conventions of the discipline of history.
Some dominant conceptions, however, revealed barriers that prevented teachers’ collective
ability to engage more deeply with this history, especially Māori perspectives. Students also
expressed critical views about colonisation, but many still understood this process as a
discrete ‘event’ found only in the past, reducing their ability to consider the implications of
the past for today. Furthermore, while the majority of students were receptive to learning the
history of colonisation, a significant proportion were not. The ethnographic component of the
study revealed a number of complexities that hindered deeper engagement with the past.
This included dealing with discomfort and resistance to histories of colonisation and the
challenges teachers faced in forming relationships with iwi and hapū. The ethnographic
component also showed that school field trips to sites of colonial violence held potential to
operate as place-based ‘counter narratives’ that could transform students’ prior conceptions
and deepen their engagement with difficult histories of place.
The study concludes that two key ‘patterns of engagement’ shaped teachers’ and students’
encounters with New Zealand’s history of colonisation. In the first, many teachers struggled
to engage pedagogically with Māori perspectives and approaches to the past, which made the
curriculum goal of acknowledging and validating Indigenous systems of knowledge less
likely. In the second, students’ emotional discomfort functioned as a complex and everpresent dynamic that potentially deepened but at times reduced their engagement with
difficult histories of colonisation. Collectively these findings have implications for classroom
practice and policy reform that take on a renewed urgency with New Zealand’s move toward
compulsory teaching of New Zealand history.
This study investigates the role and performance of the print media in (re)presenting the voice of different groups in its coverage of bicultural relations in Aotearoa New Zealand. Specifically, it explores media coverage of Maori protest occupations in terms of the agency afforded to these groups, and in terms of the reiterative role of the media in 'performatively' reproducing the social spaces that constitute New Zealand. The 1995 occupation of Pakaitore/Moutoa gardens in Wanganui by local Maori, was the focus for this investigation. The study located eighty articles printed in The New Zealand Herald and eighty seven articles printed in The Dominion over the 79-day occupation period. First, coding and word counts were used to determine amount of voice afforded to the main interest groups. Second, the way media (re)present these voices was examined through: amount of quoting vs. paraphrasing; length of quote; and juxtaposition of accounts with alternative accounts. The amount of voice afforded to Maori was found to be more consistent with status as a minority under multiculturalism, than with their status as equal partners under the Treaty of Waitangi (and biculturalism). Media (re)presentation of Maori voices was found to differ from that of other interest groups involved in the occupation on these measures. We contend the outcome was a diminution of agency for Maori.
Social identity theory as developed by Tajfel and Turner argues that there are two distinct aspects of the self-concept: personal identity and social identity (in American terminology, collective identity). Although many self-esteem measures are available in the literature, they allfocus on individuals'evaluation of their personal identity, whether in private or interpersonal domains. No scale currently exists that assesses the positivity of one's social, or collective, identity. A scale was constructed to assess individual differences in collective, rather than personal, self-esteem, with four subscales (Membership esteem, Public collective self-esteem, Private collective self-esteem, and Importance to Identity). Evidence for reliability and validity of the scale was provided by three studies, suggesting that the scale can be a useful research tool. Implications for research and social identity theory are discussed.
An integrated threat theory composed of four variables was used to predict attitudes toward immigrant groups in Spain and Israel. The four threats are symbolic threats based on value differences between groups; realistic threats to the power, resources, and well-being of the in-group; anxiety concerning social interaction with out-group members; and feelings of threat arising from negative stereotypes of the out-group. All four threats were significant predictors of attitudes toward one or more of the immigrant groups. It was predicted, and found, that intergroup anxiety and negative stereotypes were more powerful and consistent predictors of prejudicial attitudes toward immigrants than were realistic threats or symbolic threats. The implications of the theory for the causes and reduction of prejudice were discussed.
We address the role of racial antagonism in whites’ opposition to racially-targeted policies. The data come from four surveys selected for their unusually rich measurement of both policy preferences and other racial attitudes: the 1986 and 1992 National Election Studies, the 1994 General Social Survey, and the 1995 Los Angeles County Social Survey. They indicate that such opposition is more strongly rooted in racial antagonism than in non-racial conservatism, that whites tend to respond to quite different racial policies in similar fashion, that racial attitudes affect evaluations of black and ethnocentric white presidential candidates, and that their effects are just as strong among college graduates as among those with no college education. Second, we present evidence that symbolic racism is consistently more powerful than older forms of racial antagonism, and its greater strength does not diminish with controls on non-racial ideology, partisanship, and values. The origins of symbolic racism lie partly in both anti-black antagonism and non-racial conservative attitudes and values, and so mediates their effects on policy preferences, but it explains substantial additional variance by itself, suggesting that it does represent a new form of racism independent of older racial and political attitudes. The findings are each replicated several times with different measures, in different surveys conducted at different times. We also provide new evidence in response to earlier critiques of research on symbolic racism.
The context of intergroup relations in Aotearoa/New Zealand was investigated using perceptions of history by Maori (Polynesian-descended) and Pakeha (European-descended) samples from university and the general public. There was strong consensus that the Treaty of Waitangi was the most important event in New Zealand's history, but only Maori, the subordinate ethnic group, showed in-group favouritism in their judgements regarding the Treaty. Pakeha, the dominant group, showed outgroup favouritism, and distanced themselves front past injustices using linguistic strategies. Maori students showed interest in their ethnic origins (ontogeny), rating the distant past and Polynesian history higher, and free-recalling more events prior to European arrival than other groups; Maori in the general population shared a more similar perception of history to Pakeha. Both in-group favouritism and ontogeny were found in sentence-completion choices. Historical perceptions were strongly related to positions on current political issues. Results are related to social identity theory, social representations theory, and social dominance theory. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The present study investigated whether the packages that White Americans use to describe affirmative action (AA) are associated with attitudes toward out-group members and White racial identity. Packages are ideas that organize a series of events and were content-coded from students' (N = 176) written opinions on AA (Gamson & Modigliani, 1987). Use of the remedial action and no preferential treatment packages were virtually unrelated to out-group and White racial identity attitudes. However, use of the delicate balance package was associated with modern racism, social dominance orientation, comfort interacting with African Americans, and certain aspects of White racial identity. These data suggest that many of the White Americans who advocate equality without sacrificing individual rights may find this position to be a compelling way to make sense of the AA controversy and that this position tends to accompany endorsement of egalitarian views, comfort with African Americans, and highly developed White racial identities.
Although traditional anti-black prejudice among whites has decreased since the 1940s, social policies designed to assist blacks continue to face opposition and controversy. Accounts have pointed to self-interest, American beliefs about inequality, or persistent negative racial attitudes as underlying causes of widespread opposition to race-targeted policies. We hypothesize that opposition hinges on the explicitness of the race-targeting and whether the policy's goal is opportunity enhancement or equality of outcomes. We also hypothesize that the influence of individuals' self-interest, beliefs about inequality, and racial attitudes on opinions differs by whether or not a policy is race-targeted and by a policy's goal. We use data from the 1990 General Social Survey to analyze opinion toward race-targeted versus income-targeted opportunity-enhancing policies and toward race-targeted versus income-targeted equal outcomes policies. Results of these analyses lend general support to our hypotheses, and in particular, underscore the influence of group self-interest and perceived discrimination on white opposition to race-targeted policy.
In this paper we examine the effects of economic self-interest, racial affect, and stratification beliefs on attitudes toward
affirmative action programs held by whites. Using data from a recent national survey we find that at present direct and indirect
competitive self-interest significantly shape white opposition to these programs. Stronger predictors of opposition, however,
are negative racial affect, the perceived egalitarian consequences of affirmative action programs, and the general denial
of unequal opportunity. Some suggestions for needed further research are offered, and the implications of our findings for
social policy and for understanding the current racial climate are discussed.
Despite the decade-long debate in the media and in the social science literature over affirmative action programs, relatively little information has appeared about attitudes toward these programs. In this article racial threat or self-interest, new symbolic racism, and old-fashioned racism are examined as predictors of attitudes about affirmative action programs. The data are from a national survey conducted in the late fall of 1978 by Louis Harris and Associates for the National Conference of Christians and Jews. Self-interest, new symbolic racism, and old-fashioned racism are all found to be related to attitudes about affirmative action programs and remain so when a variety of control variables are included in the regression analyses. The new racism scale was clearly the best predictor of attitudes about affirmative action programs but is shown to have many underpinnings from traditional sources of racism. Possible reasons for the effect of self-interest on attitudes about affirmative action programs that had not been related to racial attitudes in earlier studies are discussed.
This study theorizes that news coverage of political issues not only influences people's thinking about the issues but also activates associated racial or ethnic stereotypes held by individuals and influences whether these perceptions are applied in politically meaningful ways, such as in the formation of issue positions or evaluations about whether certain political, economic, or legal outcomes are positive for U.S. society. To test these ideas, an experiment was conducted in which the news frame of immigration was systematically altered—as either material or ethical in nature—within controlled political information environments to examine how individuals process, interpret, and use issue information in forming political judgments. The findings provide strong support for the perspective that news coverage of issues, by priming subjects to focus on some considerations and relationships and not others, influences the strength of the associations between individuals' racial cognitions and their political evaluations.