Misperceptions of Racial Economic Progress and the Concealment of Racial Inequality
Sa-kiera Hudson, Professor
Business, Haas School
Applications for Spring 2024 are closed for this project.
If you were to estimate how much income and wealth the average Black family in the U.S. had relative to their White counterparts in 1963 and 2019, how accurate do you think you would be?
It turns out that most people are extremely inaccurate, consistently and systematically overestimating the amount of racial economic progress. In 1963, a Black family made $52.90 relative to a White family’s $100, and in 2019, a Black family made $58.82 to a White family’s $100. Despite the actual gap closing by merely $5.92, participants across four studies estimated the gap closed by around $30.00 (Hudson et al., in progress). The wealth gap–defined as the quantity of assets a person possesses– is starker: in 1963, a Black family had $5.17 for every $100 of White wealth; in 2019, only $12.74 USD in Black wealth relative to a White family’s $100 (Federal Reserve, 2021). Although the actual wealth gap closed by $7.57, participants also estimated that the gap closed by about $30.00.
In this lab, we investigate the hierarchy-reinforcing myth that social progress is a natural and inevitable consequence of the passage of time, which can lead individuals to believe there has been significantly more progress in achieving racial equality than what is supported by evidence. For example, this belief in racial progress leads individuals to underestimate how large the racial income and wealth gaps currently are in the United States.
We have found that while people make more accurate estimates with manipulations that incentivize accuracy or diminish the role of math in their calculations, these underestimates of racial economic inequality are extremely robust. People are also inaccurate when estimating intersectional economic inequality (i.e., racial and gender inequality combined), with a lack of awareness that White men have significantly more wealth and income than Black and Latina women compared to White and Asian women.
An outstanding question is what undergirds these inaccurate perceptions. In a series of studies, our lab is currently examining whether high status Black exemplars have driven misperceptions about the Black-White income and wealth gaps. Previous work found that the salience of high status Asian exemplars contributed to misperceptions of the White-Asian wealth gap. In a series of three studies, Kuo and colleagues (2019) manipulated participants’ perceived status of Asian Americans. Overall, priming high status exemplars led to less accurate estimates of the White-Asian wealth gap. In another study, our lab investigates whether participants overestimate social progress as a function of temporally distancing themselves from the recent past, believing that the Civil Rights Movement is farther in the past than it actually is (Hudson et al., in progress).
Role: Students will act as research assistants (RAs) for Haas Intersectionality, Group Hierarchy, and Emotions Research (HIGHER) Lab, a social psychology research laboratory directed by Professor Hudson. As a part of this apprenticeship, students will assist in the production and publication of experimental social psychological research for a minimum of 7 hours/week, including literature reviews, survey design, data management, stimuli creation, and running experiments. Students will also attend weekly, mandatory in-person lab meetings (Thursdays, time TBD), facilitated by the lab manager and meet at least monthly with their assigned mentor(s). At the end of the semester, all students will write a final paper and present a research poster summarizing their work.
Qualifications: An ideal candidate is interested in graduate school in Social Psychology, Management, and Organizational Behavior, or a career in behavioral research. Experience with SPSS/R (or other coding languages) is beneficial but not required. All technical knowledge necessary to do well in the position will be taught throughout the semester.
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Daniel Sanji, Staff Researcher
Hours: 9-11 hrs
Social Sciences Education, Cognition & Psychology