Fifty States of Bias: Regional Differences in the Effect of Interracial Contact and Social Capital
Over the past two years, there has been increased exposure of horrific events (e.g., Charleston shooting, the death of Sandra Bland, and the death of Michael Brown) that has brought race relations to the forefront of American public discourse. One of the obvious questions is: how do we reduce intergroup conflict? Does the American ideal (to some, at least) of an integrated melting pot alleviate violence, or does it contribute to the problems? This was the mission for our project, The Geography of Bias. Over the past two months, we investigated how the relationship between integration, social capital, and implicit bias play out in various regions of the United States of America.
But first, let’s define our terms. For our purposes, we are referring to negative bias, broadly understood as associating negative traits to other groups of people. Negative bias can take two forms: explicit and implicit. Explicit bias is the most visible and damaging form, including uttering racial slurs, enforcing segregation, and worse. This form of bias is the one most frequently associated with overt racism. Fortunately, explicit bias has become socially unacceptable in contemporary American society and has been greatly reduced as a result. Implicit bias, on the other hand, is much harder to observe. Psychologists define it as an unconscious negativity associated with certain social groups. People who have implicit biases may not even know it, and may well hold egalitarian beliefs. This form of bias may result in social and economic exclusion for the group against which it is directed, such as tending to hire white applicants at a higher rate than similarly qualified black applicants. Because it is so difficult to observe, implicit bias can be extremely difficult to counteract.
What about intergroup bias? Where does it come from? Psychological theories of realistic conflict suggest that bias results from perceived competition between groups over scarce material resources. For example, residents of areas with high unemployment may oppose immigration because new residents may “take their jobs.” This could help to explain why labor unions often opposed workplace integration; more available workers would harm unions’ negotiating leverage. Symbolic conflict deals with non-tangible values and beliefs. If a group strongly identifies with a set of values, and perceives members of another group as being a threat to those values, then it may display bias against members of the other groups. Stereotypes about immigrant groups as lazy or unclean fall into this category of bias.
Let’s go back to our main question: does increased racial diversity actually help reduce bias? A recent review by psychologists Cara C. MacInnis and Elizabeth Page-Gould shows that the evidence is mixed. Intergroup contact theories argue that contact with different groups positively affects intergroup attitudes: the more you spend time with members of another race, the less you will stereotype that race as a whole. In turn, this should lead to a reduction in bias. Conversely, another body of literature argues that intergroup interaction is bad; some of this research indicates that interracial interaction leads to increased anxiety and nervousness and therefore more bias. Clearly there are disparities between these two bodies of literature. Although contact may set the stage for positive relations, an “open acceptance of diversity and willingness to engage” with members of an outgroup could further facilitate more positive interactions between two groups.
To study these questions, we gathered data at the county level. Data on implicit bias comes from millions of individual results collected between 2000-2009 for the Race Implicit Association Test (IAT), which is administered online by Project Implicit. Data on intergroup contact came from the Racial Residential Segregation Measurement Project (based on 2000 census data). Additionally, we looked at the 2009 Social Capital Index from the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development. This index is calculated using the amount of nonprofit organizations, social associations, public spaces, voter turnout, and other proxies for civic engagement. All of the following analyses controlled for education (i.e., bachelor’s degree or more) of each county using data from the 2010 US Census, as well as median income data from the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS).
Findings
How do interracial contact (i.e., integration between Black and White citizens) and/or social capital (e.g., positive community interactions) predict implicit bias (IAT) at the county level? Importantly, do relationships differ across geographical regions -- that is, how does the Northeast differ from the South in terms of what might explain reductions in implicit bias?
First, we investigated the Northeast, which is comprised of the states Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. We subjected the data to linear regression. There was a statistically significant interaction; in other words, the effect of interracial contact depended on the level of social capital (see below; Figure 1). High contact seems to be associated with reduced bias, but only in counties with high social capital! Conversely, there is no effect of interracial contact on bias in Northeastern counties with low social capital. In the Northeast, then, high social capital appears to provide an opportunity for positive interracial interactions in integrated communities, thus reducing implicit bias.
Figure 1. The effect of interracial contact and social capital on implicit bias (IAT) in the Northeastern United States.
The South, which includes the states Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Washington D.C., West Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas, demonstrated a completely different pattern (see below; Figure 2). Although there was again a statistically significant interaction between contact and social capital, there are crucial differences. Unlike in the North, interracial contact does not decrease bias in Southern counties with high social capital -- there appears to be no effect. However, in Southern counties with low social capital, increased interracial contact actually increases implicit bias! Instead of acting as an opportunity for contact to reduce bias, high social capital seems to act as a buffer to the negative effects of interracial contact that appear in areas with lower social capital. When high social capital is present, contact doesn’t matter -- however, when social capital is absent, high interracial contact may lead to more negative interactions between Black and White citizens, possibly influencing increased implicit bias.
Figure 2. The effect of interracial contact and social capital on implicit bias (IAT) in the Southern United States.
In the Western United States (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington), the only statistically significant effect was that of social capital: counties with higher social capital had lower implicit biases. Interracial contact did not affect bias. The Midwest, which included the states Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota, did not demonstrate any statistically significant effects. Neither social capital nor interracial contact were associated with changes in implicit bias. After looking over our results, it became clear that the pattern of bias is not uniform across the United States. Our analyses suggest that social capital and interracial contact do not always interact in the same way. For example, in the Northeast, diversity and racial integration seem to be especially beneficial when civic life is strong -- bias is reduced when members of different racial groups live together and positively interact with one another. In the South, however, increased racial diversity can lead to increased implicit bias when social capital is low -- when communities are not vibrant, intergroup contact may increase conflict and negative emotions.
Why do the Northeast and South exhibit such starkly different dynamics between segregation and social capital? One possible explanation is the legacy of slavery that is unique to the former Confederate states of the South. Newly-freed slaves in Southern (and often poor) states immediately began competing with White citizens for jobs, resources, and so on. These conflicts, unique to the South, may be part of the reason why counties that are low in social capital exhibit increased bias with increased interracial contact. Importantly, the South has the lowest levels of social capital in the country. The fact that social capital is negatively related to median income levels (a pattern only found in the South) may set the stage for realistic conflict to be exacerbated when interracial contact increases.
It’s also important to note that these analyses are based on Black-White integration and results on the Black IAT (by White respondents). Obviously, areas in the American Southwest are characterized by a Hispanic minority population -- thus, future research, in addition to examining additional mechanisms of bias reduction, should also keep in mind that different regions have different salient minority groups.
These results also have important implications for public policies designed to reduce bias. The differences between regions suggests that one-size-fits-all national efforts to reduce bias may not be particularly successful; instead, bias reduction should follow different considerations in each region. In the Northeast and the South, increased investment in communities and greater civic spirit will boost social capital, and likely provide more positive context for intergroup interactions. This will likely reduce bias in these regions (or at the very least, preventing the negative consequences of a racially diverse community). So is interracial contact beneficial? It depends. Legacies of slavery and segregation may affect how citizens in different regions react to increasing racial diversity in their communities; however, we argue that increasing community strength and civic engagement is a promising avenue to reducing intergroup bias.
7/30/15