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An Evolutionary Model of Racial Attitude Formation: Socially Shared and Idiosyncratic Racial Attitudes

University of Tuebingen

A growing body of research in political science has uncovered evidence of a "split personality" among Americans when it comes to racial attitudes—people express different attitudes in public than they personally hold. At present no theoretical model can account for the emergence of this discrepancy. This article proposes a simple neural model of racial attitude formation that makes an important distinction between socially shared and idiosyncratic racial attitudes. A computational model based on Kimura's (1983) Neutral Theory of Evolution predicts that socially shared racist attitudes may be able to coexist with, and eventually be replaced by, more favorable idiosyncratic racial attitudes. Results of a laboratory-based study (N = 555) involving reaction-time-based implicit measures of socially shared and idiosyncratic attitudes are consistent with the predictions derived from the computational model. The implications of the theoretical model and the empirical findings are discussed.

Key Words: implicit racial attitudes • explicit racial attitudes • affirmative action • cognitive overlap • computational modeling • Hebbian learning • neutral theory of evolution • random drift

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The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 614, No. 1, 74-101 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0002716207305979


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This Article Abstract Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Web of Science (1) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Craemer, T. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?