School of Management, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520;
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 Sep 26;114(39):10324-10331. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1707719114. Epub 2017 Sep 18.
The present research documents the widespread misperception of race-based economic equality in the United States. Across four studies ( = 1,377) sampling White and Black Americans from the top and bottom of the national income distribution, participants overestimated progress toward Black-White economic equality, largely driven by estimates of greater current equality than actually exists according to national statistics. Overestimates of current levels of racial economic equality, on average, outstripped reality by roughly 25% and were predicted by greater belief in a just world and social network racial diversity (among Black participants). Whereas high-income White respondents tended to overestimate racial economic equality in the past, Black respondents, on average, underestimated the degree of past racial economic equality. Two follow-up experiments further revealed that making societal racial discrimination salient increased the accuracy of Whites' estimates of Black-White economic equality, whereas encouraging Whites to anchor their estimates on their own circumstances increased their tendency to overestimate current racial economic equality. Overall, these findings suggest a profound misperception of and unfounded optimism regarding societal race-based economic equality-a misperception that is likely to have any number of important policy implications.
本研究记录了美国普遍存在的基于种族的经济平等观念的误解。通过对来自全国收入分布顶端和底端的白人和黑人进行的四项研究（共 1377 人），参与者高估了黑人与白人之间经济平等的进展，这主要是由于根据国家统计数据，他们对当前平等程度的估计高于实际情况。对当前种族经济平等程度的高估平均而言，比实际情况高出约 25%，这是由更强烈的公正世界信念和社会网络种族多样性（黑人参与者）所预测的。虽然高收入的白人受访者往往高估过去的种族经济平等，但黑人受访者平均而言，低估了过去种族经济平等的程度。两项后续实验进一步表明，突出社会种族歧视会提高白人对黑人和白人之间经济平等的估计的准确性，而鼓励白人将他们的估计基于自己的情况会增加他们高估当前种族经济平等的倾向。总的来说，这些发现表明，人们对基于社会种族的经济平等存在深刻的误解和毫无根据的乐观，这种误解可能会对任何数量的重要政策产生影响。
