Dramatic political events shifted white racial attitudes in a positive direction.

Evidence

With respect to attitudes and attitude change, Riley and Pettigrew (1976) found that dramatic political events led to a positive change in racial attitudes. They reported data on the attitudes of white Texans before and after Eisenhower’s decision to send troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. They also had data collected shortly before and after the assasination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Despite some countervailing movement among those with initially negative attitudes, both occurrences produced overall positive shifts on pertinent racial attitudes. In the case of the attitudinal impact of the assassination of Dr. King, Riley and Pettigrew were able to rule out the possibility of simply having captured a preexisting trend by comparing two preoccurrence surveys, separated by several months, that showed no change. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3378

Categorization

• QUESTION: The finding that Eisenhower sending troops to Little Rock and King’s assassination both produced positive racial attitude shifts is surprising and worth chasing—what mechanisms were proposed, and did the effects persist?
• XREF: connects to: Southern and non-Southern whites changed racial attitudes at equal rates — Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington, Why Did the Democrats Lose the South?…, 319; White racial-egalitarian attitudes changed faster than modern gay-marriage support — Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington, Why Did the Democrats Lose the South?…, 317