Preprint
Article

This version is not peer-reviewed.

White Liberals Become ‘Anti-White’ when Situationally Frustrated

Submitted:

05 September 2021

Posted:

13 September 2021

You are already at the latest version

Abstract
North American Whites tend to evaluate members of their own race more positively than members of other races. One exception may be White Liberals, who appear politically motivated to evaluate members of (disadvantaged) racial outgroups more positively than members of their own racial group. We confirmed this claim presently, where 75 White Liberals, 95 White Conservatives, 49 Black Liberals and 71 Black Conservatives evaluated biracial faces using explicit and implicit evaluation tests. We instrumentally ‘frustrated’ half our participants to note whether incidental anger influenced ideologically-motivated racial attitudes. Evaluations towards racial outgroups were largely unaffected by negative mood induction -White Liberals were pro-Black relative to White Conservatives, and Black Conservatives were pro-White relative to Black Liberals, independent of mood. Negative mood induction selectively influenced own-race evaluations. Black Liberals and White Conservatives became respectively more pro-Black and pro-White when frustrated.Conversely, Black Conservatives and White Liberals became respectively less pro-Black and pro-White. Frustration significantly amplified negative own-race attitudes across explicit and implicit evaluation measures for White Liberals. We speculate on some social consequences that may follow from frustration-amplified ‘anti-White’ bias across White Liberals.
Keywords: 
;  ;  ;  
Subject: 
Social Sciences  -   Psychology
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.
Prerpints.org logo

Preprints.org is a free preprint server supported by MDPI in Basel, Switzerland.

Subscribe

Disclaimer

Terms of Use

Privacy Policy

Privacy Settings

© 2025 MDPI (Basel, Switzerland) unless otherwise stated