Racial Resentment, Prejudice, and Discrimination

Political scientists regularly measure anti-Black prejudice in the survey context using racial resentment, an indirect measure that blends racial animus with traditional moral values. Explicit prejudice, a direct measure based in beliefs about the group-level inferiority of Blacks, is used less frequently. We investigate whether these attitudes predict anti-Black discrimination and evaluations of the fairness of intergroup inequality. Study 1 used the Ultimatum Game to obtain a behavioral measure of racial discrimination and found whites engaged in anti-Black discrimination. Explicit prejudice explained which whites discriminated, whereas resentment did not. In study 2, white third-party observers evaluated intergroup interactions in the Ultimatum Game, and explicit prejudice explained racially biased fairness evaluations, but resentment did not. This demonstrates that resentment and prejudice are distinct constructs and that explicit prejudice has clear behavioral implications. We also find that explicit prejudice is widespread among white Americans and significantly less partisan than resentment.