Wealthy Whites and poor Blacks: Implicit associations between racial groups and wealth predict explicit opposition toward helping the poor

Abstract

The current research investigates whether automatic associations between race and social class predict deliberative attitudes toward wealth redistribution policies. In three studies, we found that participants were significantly more likely to associate African Americans (vs. White Americans) with the concept of poor in an implicit task. In addition, we found that this implicit association between poor and African Americans predicted explicit attitudes toward wealth redistribution (Study 1)—an effect mediated by the belief that redistributive policies benefit African Americans over White Americans (Study 2). Further, these associations held when controlling for implicit affective associations and explicit prejudice. Manipulating people's metacognitive beliefs about the validity of their implicit associations shifted whether implicit Black-poor associations predicted support for wealth redistribution (Study 3). Overall, these findings suggest race/class associations are well-learned, spontaneously activated, and may predict explicit policy attitudes toward wealth redistribution above and beyond implicit or explicit affective prejudice.