Black and White Americans' Affective Experiences and Perceptions of Discrimination in Mundane Social Contexts
Abstract
The list of disparate experiences and outcomes lived by Black versus White
Americans is a long one. The plethora of ubiquitous differences in extant literature offer
some interesting questions: Just how different are the day-to-day experiences of Black
Americans compared to their White counterparts? And how do these contrasting
experiences influence affective reactions and perceptions to seemingly mundane social
interactions? The proposed study aimed to answer these questions by evaluating the
affective experiences from individuals within each racial group after experiencing a
mundane, ambiguous, yet race-salient event. Prolific users (N = 203; Black = 103, White
= 100) were presented three low (LRS) and three ambiguous race-salient (ARS) events
via vignettes. Participants were prompted to read the vignettes as if they were
experiencing the events themselves, then reported their subsequent affective reactions
and perceptions. Contrary to hypotheses, results indicated no significant differences in
affective or perceptual reactions between Black and White participants in the ARS
condition after controlling for reactions in the LRS condition. Among Black participants,
analyses revealed an interaction between negative reactions in the LRS condition and
Black Identity Centrality (BIC) on negative reactions in the ARS condition. When
negative reactions to events in the LRS condition were low, participants high in BIC
reacted more negatively to events in the ARS condition than those low in BIC, but when
negative reactions to the LRS condition where high, participants low in BIC reacted more
negatively to events in the ARS condition than participants high in BIC. A similar
interaction was found for positive reactions and scores on the Modern Racism Scale
(MRS) among White participants.
Permanent Link
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1793/85631Type
Thesis