Are Smart People Less Racist? Verbal Ability, Anti-Black Prejudice, and the Principle-Policy Paradox
Bibliographic record
Abstract
It is commonly hypothesized that higher cognitive abilities promote racial tolerance and a greater commitment to racial equality, but an alternative theoretical framework contends that higher cognitive abilities merely enable members of a dominant racial group to articulate a more refined legitimizing ideology for racial inequality. According to this perspective, ideological refinement occurs in response to shifting patterns of racial conflict and is characterized by rejection of overt prejudice, superficial support for racial equality in principle, and opposition to policies that challenge the dominant group’s status. This study estimates the impact of verbal ability on a comprehensive set of racial attitudes, including anti-black prejudice, views about black-white equality in principle, and racial policy support. It also investigates cohort differences in the effects of verbal ability on these attitudes. Results suggest that high-ability whites are less likely than low-ability whites to report prejudicial attitudes and more likely to support racial equality in principle. Despite these liberalizing effects, high-ability whites are no more likely to support a variety of remedial policies for racial inequality. Results also suggest that the ostensibly liberalizing effects of verbal ability on anti-black prejudice and views about racial equality in principle emerged slowly over time, consistent with ideological refinement theory. Comúnmente se plantea la hipótesis de que las habilidades cognitivas superiores promueven la tolerancia racial y un mayor compromiso con la igualdad racial, pero un marco teórico alternativo sostiene que las habilidades cognitivas superiores simplemente permiten a los miembros de un grupo racial dominante articular una ideología legitima más refinada de la desigualdad racial. De acuerdo con esta perspectiva, el refinamiento ideológico se produce en respuesta a los patrones cambiantes de los conflictos raciales y se caracteriza por el rechazo de los prejuicios abiertos, el apoyo superficial por la igualdad racial, en principio, y la oposición a las políticas que cuestionan el estatus del grupo dominante. Este estudio estima el impacto de la capacidad verbal en un amplio conjunto de actitudes raciales, incluyendo el prejuicio anti-negro, puntos de vista sobre negros-blancos la igualdad, en principio, y de apoyo a políticas raciales. También investiga las diferencias de grupo en los efectos de la habilidad verbal en estas actitudes. Los resultados sugieren que los blancos de alta capacidad son menos propensos que los blancos de baja capacidad a reportar actitudes prejuiciosas y más propensos a apoyar la igualdad racial en principio. A pesar de estos efectos liberalizadores, los blancos de alta capacidad no son más propensos a apoyar una variedad de políticas correctivas de la desigualdad racial. Los resultados también sugieren que los efectos supuestamente liberalizadores de la capacidad verbal sobre los prejuicios anti-negro y puntos de vista acerca de la igualdad racial en principio surgieron lentamente con el tiempo, en consonancia con la teoría de refinamiento ideológico.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".