نگرش ضدسفید سیاه پوستان: تاثیر هویت نژادی و پنج عامل بزرگ

Two studies involving community-based samples of Blacks assessed the extent that Black anti-White attitudes are associated with racial identity and the Big Five. The two forms of anti-White attitudes assessed were ingroup-directed bias (i.e., discriminatory expectations) and outgroup-directed bias. The results of study one indicated that ingroup-directed bias was negatively related to humanism and positively related to nationalism, while outgroup-directed bias was negatively associated with humanism and positively associated with centrality and nationalism. The results of study two indicated that ingroup-directed bias was associated with lower agreeableness and higher neuroticism, while outgroup-directed bias was associated with lower agreeableness, lower conscientiousness, and higher openness to new experience.

In the past century, social scientists have given extensive attention to the empirical study of racial prejudice and intergroup bias, adopting two general conceptual approaches. The first, and most pervasive approach, focuses on the extent that racial prejudice is influenced by situational factors and intergroup dynamics (e.g., Henderson-King and Nisbett, 1996, Johnson et al., 2000, Lepore and Brown, 1997, Macrae et al., 1997 and Tropp and Pettigrew, 2005). The second approach, which has received considerably less attention, emphasizes the variability in people’s propensity to harbor negative intergroup biases. For example, right wing authoritarianism has been shown to be a powerful predictor of negative attitudes towards Black Americans as well as other groups (e.g., Lambert and Chasteen, 1997 and Lippa and Arad, 1999). Although previous research examining individual and situational variability in intergroup bias has certainly enhanced our understanding of group relations and processes (see also research examining situation-specific manifestations of personality; e.g., Mischel & Shoda, 1995), Dunbar (1995) contends that the majority of the research on prejudice and social intolerance carried out in the United States employs predominantly White samples. Thus, there has been minimal empirical assessment of the variability in anti-White beliefs among non-Whites. The fact that such variability exists among Whites in their anti-Black attitudes, makes it reasonable to assume that similar variability could exist among Blacks with respect to their anti-White attitudes. Thus, the present research addressed this limitation in the prejudice literature by investigating whether variations in racial identity attitudes (Section 2) and the Big Five (Section 3) are associated with negative attitudes towards Whites within community-based samples of Black participants. 1.1. Empirical investigation of Black negative attitudes towards Whites Johnson and Lecci (2003) recently developed a self-report measure of Black anti-White bias with items that were generated from the everyday experiences of Black respondents. An act-frequency approach to item generation was employed and the scale configuration was derived using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Consistent with the findings of Monteith and Spicer (2000), it was demonstrated that Black negative attitudes towards Whites include expectations of ingroup-directed bias as well as outgroup-directed biases against Whites. Outgroup-directed bias refers to negative perceptions minority group members hold towards majority group members (e.g., “I believe that the success of a White person is due to their color”), whereas ingroup-directed bias refers to perceptions of how outgroup members (typically those in the majority group) view the ingroup (i.e., Blacks), thereby resulting in expectations of bias (e.g., “I believe that most whites would discriminate against Blacks, if they could get away with it”). Although there are a number of conceptualizations, group identification usually involves an individual’s awareness of his/her membership in a social group and his/her attachment to that group (e.g., Gurin & Townsend, 1986). Interestingly, a growing body of evidence suggests that there is a positive association between group identification and attributions of discrimination (e.g., Crocker and Major, 1989 and Operario and Fiske, 2001). While there is clear evidence that racial identity is associated with racism-related perceptual operations, some theorists have suggested that such research may not fully reflect the complexity of Black racial identity. Specifically, Sellers, Rowley, Chavous, Shelton, and Smith (1997) contend that two Black people could be equally identified and have very distinct ideologies about what it means to be Black. Thus, they developed the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (MIBI; Sellers et al., 1997) to include a more comprehensive array of dimensions that might play a role in Black racial identity. This inventory measures the extent to which a person normatively defines her/himself with regard to race (i.e., racial centrality), the person’s affective and evaluative judgment of her/his race (i.e., racial regard), and the individual’s beliefs, opinions, and attitudes with regard to the way she/he feels that the members of the race should act (i.e., racial ideology). There are also four measures of racial ideology that reflect Black Americans’ “views on what it means to be a member of a racial group” ( Sellers & Shelton, 2003, p. 1080). Those ideologies are: (a) a nationalist ideology, which stresses the uniqueness of being of African descent; (b) an oppressed minority ideology, which stresses similarities between Black Americans and other oppressed groups; (c) an assimilationist ideology, which stresses similarities between Black Americans and American mainstream society; and (d) a humanist ideology, which stresses the commonalities of all humans. Although there is some evidence that Black racial identity is related to responses associated with expectations of ingroup-directed bias, such as perceived racism (e.g., Operario and Fiske, 2001 and Shelton and Sellers, 2000), recent research has demonstrated that Black negative attitudes towards Whites also have an outgroup-directed component (Johnson and Lecci, 2003 and Monteith and Spicer, 2000) and this complexity of Black anti-White attitudes has implications for interpersonal responses. Specifically, intergroup attitudes involving expectations of ingroup-directed bias predict perceived racism and acceptance of direct confrontation with a racist, but they do not predict acceptance of anti-White discrimination (Johnson, Lecci, & Swim, 2006). These findings provide empirical support to Monteith and Spicer’s (2000) contention that Black sensitivity to racism may not be directly related to global negative feelings towards Whites. Moreover, outgroup-directed biases predicted acceptance of anti-White discrimination (Monteith & Spicer, 2000). These particular findings suggest that blatant anti-White discrimination is probably greatly influenced by negative feelings and/or hostility directed at Whites, but not sensitivity to racism. One question that remains is whether racial identity is associated with such outgroup-directed biases against Whites, and whether the association between anti-White bias and racial identity varies as a function of the specific racial identity component. Thus, the first study in the present investigation extends the intergroup relations research by employing the MIBI (Sellers et al., 1997) and the Johnson–Lecci Scale (JLS; Johnson & Lecci, 2003) to directly assess whether racial identity is associated with negative attitudes towards Whites involving expectations of ingroup-directed discrimination and/or outgroup-directed biases. 1.2. Personality and bias among Blacks Relatively little research to date has addressed non-race related personality characteristics among Blacks, as subsumed by the Big Five, that might be associated with negative attitudes towards Whites. Personality characteristics are significant motivating agents behind the broad construct of prejudicial behavior (i.e., directed towards race, gender, age, sexual orientation, etc.), rather than uniquely predicting specific manifestations of prejudice, such as racism (e.g., Allport, 1954, see also Bierly, 1985). More recently, the Big Five personality factors have been examined with respect to prejudicial behavior (assessed using right wing authoritarianism). The findings illustrate that prejudicial behavior is positively related with conscientiousness ( Heaven & Bucci, 2001) and extraversion ( Lippa and Arad, 1999 and Trapnell, 1994), but inversely related to openness to new experience ( Altemeyer, 1996, Heaven and Bucci, 2001, Lippa and Arad, 1999, Peterson et al., 1997 and Van Hiel and Mervielde, 2005). This research reflects the traditional model of prejudicial thinking, which involves a target group that is in the minority and has been marginalized in some way (e.g., homosexuals, racial minorities, women, etc.). Less clear is how the Big Five relates to anti-White attitudes that are held by minority group members, as past research suggests that anti-Black and anti-White attitudes are not merely reciprocal constructs ( Johnson & Lecci, 2003). Moreover, there has been little research examining personality characteristics that relate explicitly to perceived racism (for an exception see Combs et al., 2006), and no studies examining the Big Five relative to outgroup-directed biases held among Blacks.