Social desirability bias makes present-day racial preference measurement difficult

Evidence

Perhaps a greater challenge given the current social desirability bias against admitting conservative racial views (see Stephens-Davidowitz, 2014, Mas and Moretti, 2009 and Greenwald et al., 2009 on whether racism cost Barack Obama votes in his presidential elections), is to measure to what extent racial views continue to shape U.S. political outcomes today. — Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington, Why Did the Democrats Lose the South?…, 986

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is the methodological crux the reader’s generalizability question hinges on: how do ‘never-satiated’ racial-threat dynamics appear when self-report is censored? Latent signals needed.
• XREF: connects to: Social desirability bias does not currently invalidate survey measures of racial attitudes. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 2200; Social dominance prejudice correlations survive controls for social desirability bias — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1049; Social desirability bias does not inflate symbolic racism’s link to policy views — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 226 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Social desirability bias does not currently invalidate survey measures of racial attitudes. #contradicts (0.92) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2200
• Survey measures understate White racial prejudice due to social desirability #corroborates (0.90)
• Overt self-reporting of prejudice is contaminated by social-desirability concerns #corroborates (0.85) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 269
• Social desirability bias does not inflate symbolic racism’s link to policy views #contradicts (0.80) — Christopher Tarman and David O. Sears, The Conceptualization and Measurement…, 226
• Social dominance prejudice correlations survive controls for social desirability bias #qualifies (0.75) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1049
• Reported racial attitudes often diverge from actual discriminatory behavior #complicates (0.72) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2089
• Racial attitudes form several distinct dimensions rather than one unitary prejudice #complicates (0.72) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3430