Testing the efficacy of three informational interventions for reducing misperceptions of the Black-White wealth gap

Messenger-Message Discordance: When Presenting Workplace Disparities, Who Speaks Up (and How) Matters for Other-Interest and Self-Interest Attributions

Sharing messages about group-based disparities is an important strategy for raising awareness. However, not all messengers are evaluated alike. We predict that perceived motivations of messengers depend on who they are and how they speak up. Across one pilot and three pre-registered experiments (N = 2,240), we show that when messengers present group-based disparities in the workplace, their demographic identity and their message content jointly influence how they are perceived regarding self-interest and other-interest motives. We find a negative messenger-message discordance effect: White men are generally viewed as less other-interested and more self-interested than Black and female messengers when presenting statistics-only messages on workplace disparities. However, incorporating explicit personal advocacy against inequality mitigates less favorable interest perceptions for White men and boosts perceived other-interest for all messengers. The study further explores qualitative responses on motivation and provides insights into the nuanced dynamics of messenger perceptions considering demographic identities and message content.

Past-future asymmetry in identity-relevant perception of racism and inequality

Research has documented the identity relevance of racism perception, such that White Americans tend to deny the prevalence of racism and inequality in the United States to a greater extent than do Americans from other ethnic-racial groups. Across two studies (N = 971), we draw on temporal comparison theory to investigate how the identity relevance of such perceptions varies across past and future temporal periods. Specifically, we compared (1) the relationship between ethnic-racial identification and perceptions (Studies 1 and 2), (2) racial-group differences in perceptions (Study 2), and (3) perceptions of systemic (versus interpersonal) racism (Studies 1 and 2) across past and future periods. Results generally supported the temporal asymmetry hypothesis: the identity relevance of perceptions of racism and inequality decreased as temporal distance increased from the distant past to the present but remained strong and stable from the present to the future. This pattern suggests a contradiction in the subjective experience of time, such that people experience the distant past (1960) as less relevant to present self than the equidistant (2080) and even more distant (2100) future.

Identity and inequality misperceptions, demographic determinants and efficacy of corrective measures

By conducting two waves of large-scale surveys in the United Kingdom and Germany, we investigate the determinants of identity and inequality misperceptions. We first show that people substantially overestimate the share of immigrants, Muslims, people under the poverty line, and the income share of the richest. Moreover, women, lower-income, and lower-educated respondents generally have higher misperceptions. Only income share misperceptions are associated more with people who place themselves on the left of the political spectrum. In contrast, the other three misperceptions are more prevalent among those who place themselves to the right. We then attempt to correct misperceptions by conducting a classic controlled experiment. Specifically, we randomly assign respondents into a treatment group informed about their initial misperceptions and a control group left uninformed. Our results indicate that information treatments had some corrective effects on misperceptions in Germany but were ineffective in the United Kingdom. Moreover, information treatments in Germany were more effective for men, centrists, and highly educated respondents. There is also no evidence of spill-over effects: correcting one misperception does not have corrective effects for the other misperceptions.

Reminders of Japanese redress increase Asian American support for Black reparations

Informational interventions can shape policy attitudes, and in this study, we examined whether largely unknown information about past reparations payments toward one minoritized group would shape current policy judgments. In 1942, the U.S. government wrongfully relocated and imprisoned more than 120,000 Japanese Americans. In 1988, the government apologized and offered $20,000 USD in reparations payments. Japanese American redress is a recent, but not widely known, concrete example of communities who have successfully fought for reparative economic action. In two preregistered studies of online crowdsourced panels of Asian Americans (N = 329, N = 500), an intervention that raised awareness of this history of incarceration and redress increased support for reparations for Black Americans, relative to a control condition, and national polling data on support for reparations. Exploratory analyses revealed that the degree of learning about Japanese American redress in the intervention explained its impact on support for Black reparations. Future research should target representative samples to understand how education about past redress within one's own social group affects support for reparative economic justice for others.

Strategic Messaging to Promote Policies that Advance Racial Equity: What Do We Know, and What Do We Need to Learn?

Policy Points Many studies have explored the impact of message strategies to build support for policies that advance racial equity, but few studies examine the effects of richer stories of lived experience and detailed accounts of the ways racism is embedded in policy design and implementation. Longer messages framed to emphasize social and structural causes of racial inequity hold significant potential to enhance support for policies to advance racial equity. There is an urgent need to develop, test, and disseminate communication interventions that center perspectives from historically marginalized people and promote policy advocacy, community mobilization, and collective action to advance racial equity.

CONTEXT

Long-standing racial inequities in health and well-being are shaped by racialized public policies that perpetuate disadvantage among Black, Brown, Indigenous, and people of color. Strategic messaging can accelerate public and policymaker support for public policies that advance population health. We lack a comprehensive understanding of lessons learned from work on policy messaging to advance racial equity and the gaps in knowledge it reveals.

METHODS

A scoping review of peer-reviewed studies from communication, psychology, political science, sociology, public health, and health policy that have tested how various message strategies influence support and mobilization for racial equity policy domains across a wide variety of social systems. We used keyword database searches, author bibliographic searches, and reviews of reference lists from relevant sources to compile 55 peer-reviewed papers with 80 studies that used experiments to test the effects of one or more message strategies in shaping support for racial equity-related policies, as well as the cognitive/emotional factors that predict their support.

FINDINGS

Most studies report on the short-term effects of very short message manipulations. Although many of these studies find evidence that reference to race or use of racial cues tend to undermine support for racial equity-related policies, the accumulated body of evidence has generally not explored the effects of richer, more nuanced stories of lived experience and/or detailed historical and contemporary accounts of the ways racism is embedded in public policy design and implementation. A few well-designed studies offer evidence that longer-form messages framed to emphasize social and structural causes of racial inequity can enhance support for policies to advance racial equity, though many questions require further research.

CONCLUSIONS

We conclude by laying out a research agenda to fill numerous wide gaps in the evidentiary base related to building support for racial equity policy across sectors.

Beliefs about minority representation in policing and support for diversification

Diversification of police forces is widely promoted as a reform for reducing racial disparities in police-civilian interactions and increasing police legitimacy. Despite these potential benefits, nearly every municipal police department in the United States remains predominately White and male. Here, we investigate whether the scale and persistence of minority underrepresentation in policing might partly be explained by a lack of support for diversification among voters and current police officers. Across two studies (N = 2, 661) sampling the US adult population and residents from a city with one of the least representative police forces in the country, individuals significantly overestimate officer diversity at both the local and national levels. We find that correcting these biased beliefs with accurate information reduces trust in police and increases support for hiring new officers from underrepresented groups. In the municipal sample, these corrections also cause an increase in residents' willingness to vote for reforms to diversify their majority White police department. Additional paired decision-making experiments (N = 1, 663) conducted on these residents and current police officers demonstrate that both prefer hiring new officers from currently underrepresented groups, independent of civil service exam performance and other hiring criteria. Overall, these results suggest that attitudes among voters and police officers are unlikely to pose a major barrier to diversity reforms.

School choice increases racial segregation even when parents do not care about race

This research examines how school choice impacts school segregation. Specifically, this work demonstrates that even if parents do not take the racial demographics of schools into account, preference differences between Black and White parents for other school attributes can still result in segregation. These preference differences stem from motivational differences in pursuit of social status. Given that the de facto US racial hierarchy assigns Black people to a lower social status, Black parents are more motivated to seek schools that signal that they can improve their children's status. Simulations of parental school decisions at scale show that preference differences under an unmitigated school-choice policy lead to more segregated schools, impacting more than half a million US children for every 3-percentage-point increase in school-choice availability. In contrast, if Black and White parents have similar preferences, unmitigated school choice would reduce racial segregation. This research may inform public policy concerning school choice and school segregation.