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27 - The Continuing Relevance of Whites’ Explicit Bias – and Reflections on the Tools to Measure It

from Section VI - Explicit Prejudice; Alive and Well?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2024

By
Maria Krysan
Edited by
Jon A. Krosnick ,
Tobias H. Stark  and
Amanda L. Scott
Jon A. Krosnick
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
Tobias H. Stark
Affiliation:
Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Amanda L. Scott
Affiliation:
The Strategy Team, Columbus, Ohio
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Summary

The explosion of attention to measuring and understanding implicit bias has been influential inside and outside the academy. The purpose of this chapter is to balance the conversation about how to unpack and understand implicit bias, with an exploration of what we know about Whites’ explicit bias, and how surveys and other data can be used to measure it. This chapter begins with a review of survey-based data on White racial attitudes that reveal complex trends and patterns, with some topics showing changes for the better, but others showing persistent negative or stagnant trends. Drawing on examples using a variety of methodological tools, including (1) traditional survey questions; (2) survey-based mode/question wording experiments; (3) open-ended questions embedded in surveys; and (4) in-depth interviews, I illustrate what explicit racial biases can look like, and how they might be consequential. I argue that a full understanding of intergroup relations requires sophisticated methods and theories surrounding both explicit and implicit biases, how they function separately and in combination, and their causes and consequences.

Keywords

Whites’explicit racial attitudesmethodssurveys
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Implicit Bias and Racism , pp. 692 - 710
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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