Doctor or Dishwasher? The Intersection of Class and Race in Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Toward Black Americans

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of social class and race on social perception. Survey results have routinely reported white Americans’ improved explicit attitudes toward blacks. This research more deeply explores the perception of blacks in terms of social status, on explicit and implicit levels using both warmth and competence (a questionnaire based on the Stereotype Content Model) and an Implicit Association Test that pairs race and social status. Social status should have a robust effect on explicit attitudes rating blacks as less competent and on implicit attitudes, such that participants would have significantly greater difficulty associating blacks with high status and whites with low status than the converse pairings or blacks with low status and whites with high status. Only white, but not black, participants demonstrated this pattern. This work not only illustrates differences in white and black Americans’ perceptions of blacks but also gives further insight into how explicit and implicit social attitudes may diverge.