Survey responses diverged from actual behavior after anti-prejudice norms took hold.

Evidence

The impetus to revisit Allport’s discussion of “inner conflict” was an effort to address a perplexing set of research findings concerning expressions of prejudice in the wake of the legislative and normative changes that made overt expressions of prejudice both illegal and socially taboo. Social scientists were struggling to explain the disparity between people’s reports of their racial attitudes (i.e., what they say) and their behavior (i.e., what they do; see Crosby, Bromley, & Saxe, 1980). That is, although White Americans often reported relatively positive attitudes toward Black Americans on surveys, their behaviors often belied these statements and revealed substantial evidence of prejudice – perhaps direct evidence of the “split between reason and prejudice.” — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2089

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the attitude-behavior gap literature, and to the reader’s interest in how expressed norms diverge from hidden dispositions.