Abstract
Racial economic inequality is a foundational feature of the United States, yet many Americans appear oblivious to it. In the present work we consider the psychology underlying this collective willful ignorance. Drawing on prior research and new evidence from a nationally representative sample of adults (N = 1,008), we offer compelling evidence that Americans vastly underestimate racial economic inequality, especially the racial wealth gap. In particular, respondents thought that the Black–White wealth gap was smaller, by around 40 percentage points in 1963 and around 80 percentage points in 2016, than its actual size. We then consider the motivational, cognitive, and structural factors that are likely to contribute to these misperceptions and suggest directions for future research to test these ideas. Importantly, we highlight the implications of our collective ignorance of racial economic inequality and the challenge of creating greater accuracy in perceptions of these racial economic disparities, as well as outline the steps policymakers might take to create messages on this topic that effectively promote equity-enhancing policies. We close with an appeal to psychological science to at least consider, if not center, the racial patterning of these profound economic gaps.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 899-921 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| Journal | Perspectives on Psychological Science |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 1 2019 |
Funding
We thank members of the Social Perception and Communication Lab and the micro organizational behavior group for comments on this article and research. All data, preregistration of analyses, code, and materials used in the national panel study are available at the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/dw7es/ The research was funded by the School of Management and Department of Psychology at Yale University, a National Science Foundation (NSF) predoctoral training grant to J. M. Rucker, NSF Grant BCS 15552879 (to J. A. Richeson), and NSF Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship 1809370 (to I. N. Onyeador). The research was funded by the School of Management and Department of Psychology at Yale University, a National Science Foundation (NSF) predoctoral training grant to J. M. Rucker, NSF Grant BCS 15552879 (to J. A. Richeson), and NSF Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship 1809370 (to I. N. Onyeador).
Keywords
- Economic inequality
- intergroup relations
- race/ethnicity
- racism
- social cognition
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Psychology
