On the precipice of a "majority-minority" America: perceived status threat from the racial demographic shift affects White Americans' political ideology.
The U.S. Census Bureau projects that racial minority groups will make up a majority of the U.S. national population in 2042, effectively creating a so-called majority-minority nation. In four experiments, we explored how salience of such racial demographic shifts affects White Americans' political-party leanings and expressed political ideology. Study 1 revealed that making California's majority-minority shift salient led politically unaffiliated White Americans to lean more toward the Republican Party and express greater political conservatism. Studies 2, 3a, and 3b revealed that making the changing national racial demographics salient led White Americans (regardless of political affiliation) to endorse conservative policy positions more strongly. Moreover, the results implicate group-status threat as the mechanism underlying these effects. Taken together, this work suggests that the increasing diversity of the nation may engender a widening partisan divide.
Department of Psychology and Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University macraig@u.northwestern.edu.
Maureen A
MA
Craig
Department of Psychology and Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University.
Jennifer A
JA
Richeson
D000328:Adult; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods; D003710:Demography / Q000639:trends; D005006:Ethnicity; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008913:Minority Groups / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology; D011057:Politics; D014481:United States / Q000208:ethnology; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data
conservative shift; demographic changes; political conservatism