Browsing by Subject "intergroup relations"

The increasing ethnic diversity among Black people in the United States is growing at a near exponential rate due to the migration of Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino, and African immigrants to the United States. This study is an endeavor to understand how this increasing diversity in ethnicity among Blacks in the U.S. will influence the boundaries of Black identity and Black politics. I ultimately aim to gain a sense of the processes by which Black immigrants come to embrace or reject a racial identity, the mechanisms by which African-Americans become more accepting of "cross-cutting" political issues, and the extent to which an intraracial coalition and a broader, more inclusive racial consciousness--a diasporic consciousness--might develop among Black immigrants and African Americans. This study utilizes survey data, in-depth interviews with African Americans and Black immigrants, and controlled experiments to examine the questions presented here. This study finds that African Americans and Black immigrants are accepting of a Black identity that is inclusive of ethnic diversity, largely due to shared racialized experiences. Moreover, this study concludes that while group consciousness influences the behaviors and attitudes of Black immigrants and African Americans in very similar ways, there are important differences between the groups that will need to be considered in future Black politics studies. Finally, this study finds that there are obstacles to raising a more inclusive racial consciousness because African Americans and Black immigrants do not see eye-to-eye on what issues should be be prioritized on a unified Black political agenda.

A long tradition of social psychological research suggests that perceptions of similarity and common ground can promote more harmonious relations among otherwise diverse social groups. Yet perceived similarity with and empathy for members of an outgroup can also intensify intergroup bias by threatening the positive distinctiveness of one's group. In the present research, cognitive dissonance theory is used as a framework for understanding how people experience and react to similarity with members of a rival outgroup and for clarifying the conditions under which outgroup similarity reduces or intensifies intergroup prejudice. Four studies tested the hypothesis that outgroup similarity elicits subjective feelings of cognitive dissonance, including psychological discomfort and negative self-evaluation. Study 1 was a pilot test in which similarity to an outgroup member was associated with negative self-evaluation but not psychological discomfort. Study 2 strengthened the interpretation of the turncoat effect as cognitive dissonance by demonstrating that the effect varies as a function of a classic dissonance moderator--perceived choice. Participants induced to experience outgroup similarity reported psychological discomfort and negative self-evaluation, but only when they believed their feelings of similarity resulted from a high degree of personal choice. Study 3 identified strength of ingroup identification as another key moderator of the effect: Only participants who were highly identified with their ingroup reported feelings of dissonance after an induction of outgroup similarity. Finally, Study 4 investigated the implications of three dissonance reduction strategies for intergroup prejudice.