Does a Dramatic Change in Your Social Environment Make You More Conservative, And if so, What Kind of Change Would it Take?

Posted by Isra Anwar

April 11, 2014

Social Environment

Working at Northwestern University, psychologists Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson apply that question to demographic amendment, and, particularly, to white Americans vis-a-vis the prospect of a u. s. wherever the bulk of american citizens ar drawn from today’s minorities. will a threat to one’s standing because the demographic “in-group” increase political conservatism? the solution, in short, is yes.

Using a nationwide representative survey of self-identified politically “independent” whites, Craig and Richeson conducted 3 experiments. within the initial, they asked respondents concerning the racial shift in California—if they'd detected the state had become majority-minority. What they found was a big shift toward Republican identification, that accrued for those that lived nearest to the West Coast.

In the second experiment, they centered on the U.S. shift with census projections of the national population. Again, they found that white Americans became a lot of conservative—and a lot of doubtless to endorse conservative policies—when they were responsive to demographic changes that place them within the minority.

White Americans become a lot of conservative once they learn that demographic changes ar putt them within the minority.
The final experiment—where queries were any refined and targeted—saw similar results. As Craig and Richeson write, “Perceived group-status threat, triggered by exposure to majority-minority shift, will increase Whites’ endorsement of conservative political ideology and policy positions.” What’s a lot of, this command true even when they told respondents “whites ar doubtless to stay at the highest of the longer term racial hierarchy.”

The study is fascinating, and also the empirical knowledge is worth it. however if you’re aware of our history or politics, it shouldn’t come back as a surprise.

Last year, for instance, Democracy Corps, a Democratic polling firm, did a series of focus teams with conservative Evangelicals, party voters, and moderate Republicans. The goal was to “understand the govt. closing and crisis in Washington” and check out to “get within the bottom of the party.” thereto finish, pollsters would sit down with varied varieties of Republicans and find out their issues and fears.

Near the highest of the list, they found, was a deep consciousness of being “white during a country with growing minorities.” One participant delineate his city as such:

Everybody is white. everyone is class, whether or not or not they very ar. everyone appearance that manner. everyone goes to a similar pool. everyone goes—there’s one library, one post workplace. terribly homogenized.
For most of their lives, these folks might ignore the country’s demographic amendment. however the election of President Obama was a transparent sign that things were completely different.

The result was concern and anxiety. A fear, as an example, that comprehensive immigration reform would begin a tsunami of dependency, as Democrats won their votes with the attract of presidency programs like Obamacare. “Every minority cluster desires to mention they need the proper to one thing, and that they don’t,” aforementioned one party participant. “There’s such a lot of the citizens in those teams that Democrats ar progressing to take when as a result of they’ve been on the rolls of the govt. their entire lives. They don’t understand higher,” aforementioned another.

It’s this sort of conservative feeling that drove support for the self-destructive resistance of American state subunit. Ted Cruz and his House Republican acolytes. Conservatives could ne'er win the war against government disbursement, the argument went, however they may clog the works the maximum amount as attainable.

As a political strategy, it didn’t create sense—if not for the initial failure of tending.gov, it might have tanked the GOP’s standing—but it fits dead with the results of the Northwestern study. Resigned to the majority-minority future, these voters rejected compromise and doubled down on their ideology.

Of course, the only best (and most extreme) example of this demographic concern comes from our history of slavery and social policy. quite nearly anything, it animated the nonmodern South. within the Alabama and Mississippi of the first nineteenth century, as an example, whites were the minority, outnumbered by a large—and growing—population of slaves. The result was psychosis. passionate about the prospect of slave revolts—and frightened by the instance of Haiti—whites worked to eliminate the threat of rebellion with slave patrols and lawmaker laws forbidding the distribution of learning or literature to slave blacks.

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