Social desirability bias does not currently invalidate survey measures of racial attitudes.

Evidence

Race-of-interviewer comparisons show that Whites express more liberal attitudes to Black than to White interviewers. But relatively few Whites are interviewed by Blacks. For example, in the 1986 NES survey that is often analyzed in studies of racial attitudes, only 4 percent of the White respondents had non-White interviewers. Social desirability pressures could lead some Whites to express no opinion at all rather than expressing their true prejudices (Berinsky, 2004). But in practice relatively few Whites fail to answer questions on prejudice or racism (e.g., in the 1986 NES, an average of only 3 percent of White respondents gave a “no opinion” response to the symbolic racism and old-fashioned racism items). At this point, the existing evidence does not indicate that such biases are powerful enough to render survey measures invalid, though clearly more research is needed. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2200

Race-of-interviewer comparisons show that Whites express more liberal attitudes to Black than to White interviewers. But relatively few Whites are interviewed by Blacks. For example, in the 1986 NES survey that is often analyzed in studies of racial attitudes, only 4 percent of the White respondents had non-White interviewers. Social desirability pressures could lead some Whites to express no opinion at all rather than expressing their true prejudices (Berinsky, 2004). But in practice relatively few Whites fail to answer questions on prejudice or racism (e.g., in the 1986 NES, an average of only 3 percent of White respondents gave a “no opinion” response to the symbolic racism and old-fashioned racism items). At this point, the existing evidence does not indicate that such biases are powerful enough to render survey measures invalid, though clearly more research is needed. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2200

Categorization

• QUESTION: The finding that few Whites actually decline to answer prejudice items challenges the social-desirability critique — worth chasing whether later research (e.g., IAT-era studies) overturned this.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 2200; , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2200
• XREF: connects to: Surveying ‘fair treatment’ cannot cleanly measure racial attitudes because whites can deem segregation fair. — Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington, Why Did the Democrats Lose the South?…, 1337; Older opinionation screens inflated apparent nonresponse among whites — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 225; Social desirability bias does not inflate symbolic racism’s link to policy views — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 226 (+1 more)