Demographic Ignorance

Status: Under review!

This line of work tests whether changing Americans’ perceptions of their country’s diversity affects their attitudes toward minorities. As you can see above, we’ve been surprised to find that making people think minorities make up a larger portion of the population actually decreases their implicit (and explicit) prejudice. It also decreases their conservatism. While lots of recent work has shown that learning that the United States is becoming more diverse makes White Americans more prejudiced and conservative, we show that learning that the United States is already diverse decreases these attitudes.