Verbal Attitudes, Overt Acts, and the Influence of Social Constraint in Interracial Behavior

This paper studies racial attitudes as related to an indicated willingness to accept open occupancy in white residential neighborhoods. The study attempts to ascertain whether the predictability of the overt response of a given individual to a publicly salient issue can be increased by knowing the individual's personal attitudinal position toward Negroes in general, and the influence of certain of his significant reference groups with respect to the same issue. Results of a field study show that proportional reductions in error are greater in efforts to predict overt response to the open occupancy issue when both attitudinal position and reference group influence are employed than when either attitude or reference group are employed separately.