Department of Psychology, Cornell University.
Law School Department of Psychology, Yale University.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2017 Dec;113(6):892-909. doi: 10.1037/pspi0000112. Epub 2017 Sep 14.
When the economy declines, existing racial disparities typically expand, suggesting that economic scarcity may promote racial discrimination. To understand this pattern, we examined the effect of perceived scarcity on resource allocations to Black and White American recipients, and tested whether this effect depends on a decision maker's motivation to respond without prejudice. We proposed that scarcity would lead to increased discrimination among those with relatively low internal motivation but not those high in internal motivation. Indeed, we found that when resources were framed as scarce (vs. abundant or a control condition), low-motivation participants allocated less to Black than White recipients, whereas high-motivation participants allocated more to Black than White recipients (Studies 1 and 2). This pattern was strongest when decisions could be made deliberatively (Study 3), and anti-Black allocation bias emerged even in a non-zero-sum context (Studies 4 and 5), suggesting a strategic bias directed against Black recipients rather than in favor of White recipients. These findings indicate that the psychological perception of scarcity can produce racial bias in the distribution of economic resources, depending on the motivations of the decision maker-an effect that may contribute to the increase in racial disparities observed during economic stress. (PsycINFO Database Record
当经济衰退时，现有的种族差异通常会扩大，这表明经济匮乏可能会助长种族歧视。为了理解这种模式，我们研究了感知到的稀缺性对美国黑人和白人接受者资源分配的影响，并检验了这种影响是否取决于决策者无偏见回应的动机。我们提出，在内部动机相对较低的人中，稀缺性会导致更多的歧视，但在内部动机较高的人中则不会。事实上，我们发现，当资源被描述为稀缺（与丰富或控制条件相比）时，低动机参与者分配给黑人的资源少于白人，而高动机参与者分配给黑人的资源多于白人（研究 1 和 2）。当决策可以深思熟虑地做出时（研究 3），这种模式最为强烈，即使在非零和情境中也会出现反黑人分配偏见（研究 4 和 5），这表明存在针对黑人接受者的策略性偏见，而不是有利于白人接受者的偏见。这些发现表明，经济资源分配中的种族偏见可能会因决策者的动机而产生，这种效应可能是经济压力下观察到的种族差异增加的原因之一。
