Racism and Support of Free-Market Capitalism: A Cross-Cultural Analysis

We examined the interrelationship between people's support of market capitalism and their levels of racism, using moderately large samples in the United States and Sweden. Statistically significant and positive correlations were found between these variables within both samples. This relationship was analyzed within the framework of three alternative models of social attitudes: general conservatism theory, the gender-gap hypothesis, and social dominance theory. Although there was partial support for the general conservatism model, the data were found to be least consistent with the gender-gap hypothesis and most consistent with social dominance theory.