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Americans misperceive racial economic equality
Open accessAbstract
= 1,377) sampling White and Black Americans from the top and bottom of the national income distribution, participants overestimated progress toward Black-White economic equality, largely driven by estimates of greater current equality than actually exists according to national statistics. Overestimates of current levels of racial economic equality, on average, outstripped reality by roughly 25% and were predicted by greater belief in a just world and social network racial diversity (among Black participants). Whereas high-income White respondents tended to overestimate racial economic equality in the past, Black respondents, on average, underestimated the degree of past racial economic equality. Two follow-up experiments further revealed that making societal racial discrimination salient increased the accuracy of Whites' estimates of Black-White economic equality, whereas encouraging Whites to anchor their estimates on their own circumstances increased their tendency to overestimate current racial economic equality. Overall, these findings suggest a profound misperception of and unfounded optimism regarding societal race-based economic equality-a misperception that is likely to have any number of important policy implications.
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“More generally, Americans markedly overestimate progress that has been made toward racial economic equality [101].”
From Reducing Racial Inequities in Health: Using What We Already Know to Take Action (2019) · cites this paper as [101]
In the citing paper
“and was most pronounced among high-income whites”
From Reducing Racial Inequities in Health: Using What We Already Know to Take Action (2019) · cites this paper as [101]
In the citing paper
“and was strongly associated with beliefs in a just world [101].”
From Reducing Racial Inequities in Health: Using What We Already Know to Take Action (2019) · cites this paper as [101]
In the citing paper
“A recent study found that the degree of current racial equality (e.g., in income, wealth and wages) was overestimated by about 25%”
From Reducing Racial Inequities in Health: Using What We Already Know to Take Action (2019) · cites this paper as [101]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Kraus, M. W., Rucker, J. M., & Richeson, J. A.
- Affiliations
- Yale University (US)
- Northwestern University (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2017-09-18
- Volume
- 114
- Issue
- 39
- Pages
- 10324-10331
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC5625917
- OpenAlex
- W2756364188
- Cited by
- 218
- References
- 50
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 29 · 2022: 29 · 2021: 40 · 2020: 24 · 2019: 22 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 3
- FWCI
- 41.89
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2021-11-23)
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Yale University (School of Management, Department of Psychology)
- National Science Foundation (Graduate Research Fellowship)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Racial and Ethnic Identity Research
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Race, History, and American Society
- Keywords
- racial economic inequality, black-white disparities, belief in a just world, self-serving bias, income distribution, racial attitudes
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Black or African American, Demography, Female, Humans, Male, Socioeconomic Factors, United States, Vulnerable Populations, White People, Racism
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