Vote Overreporting While Black: Identifying the Mechanism Behind Black Survey Respondents’ Vote Overreporting

2021 ◽  
pp. 1532673X2110221
Author(s):  
Clinton Jenkins ◽  
Ismail White ◽  
Michael Hanmer ◽  
Antoine Banks
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Survey Research ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Social Pressure ◽  
Racial Group ◽  
Group Norms ◽  
Linked Fate ◽  
Interviewer Effects ◽  
Black Political Behavior

It is now a well-documented fact of survey research that Black survey respondents overreport turning out to vote at higher rates than many of their peers of other racial and ethnic backgrounds. We bring renewed attention to this phenomenon by investigating how the ways in which the race of the interviewer might influence a Back respondent’s propensity to overreport turning out to vote. In this paper, we test two competing mechanisms for African American overreporting and race of interviewer effects: (1) racial group linked fate, and (2) conformity with norms of Black political behavior. We find support that social pressure to conform to group norms of political behavior is behind Black respondent’s overreporting in the presence of a same-race interviewer. These results have significant implications for how we view, analyze, and consider results from such studies.

A Discussion of Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird’s Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-210
Author(s):  
Michael Leo Owens
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Behavioral Norm ◽  
Black Political Behavior

Charge: As Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird note, collectively more than 80% of African Americans self-identify as Democrats according to surveys, and no Republican presidential candidate has won more than 13% of the Black vote since 1968. This is true despite the fact that at the individual level many African Americans are increasingly politically moderate and even conservative. Against this backdrop, what explains the enduring nature of African American support for the Democratic Party? In Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior, White and Laird answer this question by developing the concept of “racialized social constraint,” a unifying behavioral norm meant to empower African Americans as a group and developed through a shared history of struggle against oppression and for freedom and equality. White and Laird consider the historical development of this norm, how it is enforced, and its efficacy both in creating party loyalty and as a path to Black political power in the United States. On the cusp of perhaps the most consequential presidential election in American history, one for which African American turnout was crucial, we asked a range of leading political scientists to assess the relative strengths, weaknesses, and ramifications of this argument.

Black Political Decision Making

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-55
Author(s):  
Ismail K. White ◽  
Chryl N. Laird
Keyword(s):  
Political Behavior ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Group Norms ◽  
Role Identities ◽  
Political Unity ◽  
Constraint Model ◽  
Black Political Behavior ◽  
Political Decision Making

This chapter offers a detailed explanation of the racialized social constraint model of black political behavior. It argues that black support for the Democratic Party has over time become a normalized form of black political behavior for which blacks actively hold one another accountable. In developing this argument, the chapter first reviews the relevant literature on African American political behavior and discusses how many of the insights gained from this research point to the importance of group-based expectations in ensuring compliance with group norms of black political behavior. It then engages the microfoundations of black political behavior, building on insights from mainstream political behavior and social psychology to identify the precise mechanism by which black partisan homogeneity is likely maintained. The focus is on how various incentives for compliance with group norms and sanctions for defection from these norms result in the maintenance of black political unity. The chapter also discusses the unique way that these norms relate to black identity, building on insights from the psychological theory of role identities. All of this leads to a set of general expectations for what can be observed if this framework for understanding black political behavior holds.

Norms of Black Political Behavior

2020 ◽  
pp. 56-85
Author(s):  
Ismail K. White ◽  
Chryl N. Laird
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Racial Group ◽  
Forced Labor ◽  
Social Constraint ◽  
Basic Facts ◽  
Black Political Behavior

This chapter begins with a discussion of the social and political circumstances that have necessitated black political unity, norms of black political behavior, and the emergence of racialized social constraint. Placing its historical origins in slavery, the chapter looks at how racialized social constraint has developed from a tool for navigating the complicated social and political world of forced labor communities into an instrument for facilitating racial group-based collective action politics among black Americans. It connects norms of racial group constraint formed under slavery to mechanisms for mobilizing blacks into the protest activities of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and tools for facilitating specific forms of engagement in modern electoral politics. From the combined insights provided by a historical review of black Americans' efforts at collective action and the racialized social constraint model, the chapter derives predictions of how racialized norms of political behavior constrain black partisan support in modern electoral politics. Finally, the chapter highlights two basic facts that speak to the explanatory potential of this framework.

An Experimental Investigation of Self-Serving Biases in an Auditing Trust Game: The Effect of Group Affiliation

2002 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald R. King
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Investigation ◽  
Social Pressure ◽  
Trust Game ◽  
Group Norms ◽  
Group Affiliation

I report the results of an experiment designed to investigate the influence of noncredible communications and group affiliation on auditors' formation of self-serving bias. I find that manager-subjects use noncredible communications to induce auditors to develop an unwarranted trust of managers (i.e., a biased judgment). However, the bias is neutralized when auditor-subjects belong to groups that create social pressure to conform to group norms. Thus, my finding calls into question the Bazerman et al. (1997) conclusion that auditors cannot conduct impartial audits due to self-serving biases resulting from repeated interactions between auditors and their clients.

The Legal System and Its African American Constituents

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Gibson ◽  
Michael J. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Black People ◽  
Legal Authority ◽  
Linked Fate ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
Legal Legitimacy ◽  
Black Public Opinion ◽  
Representative Samples

Despite popular reports that the legal system is in a state of crisis with respect to its African American constituents, research on black public opinion in general is limited owing to the difficulty and expense of assembling representative samples of minorities. We suspect that the story of lagging legal legitimacy among African Americans is in fact quite a bit more nuanced than is often portrayed. In particular, black public opinion is unlikely to be uniform and homogeneous; black people most likely vary in their attitudes toward law and legal institutions. Especially significant is variability in the experiences—personal and vicarious—black people have had with legal authorities (e.g., “stop-and-frisk”), and the nature of individuals’ attachment to blacks as a group (e.g., “linked fate”). We posit that both experiences and in-group identities are commanding because they influence the ways in which black people process information, and in particular, the ways in which blacks react to the symbols of legal authority (e.g., judges’ robes).

On the Blackness of Post-Blackness

2019 ◽  
pp. 33-60
Author(s):  
Cameron Leader-Picone
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Art ◽  
Original Formulation ◽  
African American Art ◽  
Linked Fate ◽  
Racial Categorization ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Black Art ◽  
American Artists ◽  
African American Artists

This chapter argues that Colson Whitehead’s novel Sag Harbormirrors post-Black art’s emphasis on simultaneously rejecting and embracing the racial categorization of African American art. In doing so, Whitehead’s novel represents a qualified liberation for African American artists that optimistically imagines a freedom from racial categorizations that is still rooted in them. This chapter analyzes Whitehead’s novel in the context of the competing definitions of post-Blackness offered by Touré in Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? as well as in the original formulation by Thelma Golden. Employing a framework of “racial individualism,” the chapter argues that a loosening sense of linked fate has led to the privileging of individual agency over Black identity. In doing so, post-Blackness serves to discursively liberate African American artists from any prescriptive ideal of what constitutes black art without implying either a desire or intent to not address issues of race.

Civic Responsibility Development Among College Students

2017 ◽  
pp. 92-110
Author(s):  
Young K. Kim ◽  
Jennifer L. Carter ◽  
Cameron L. Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
College Student ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Racial Group ◽  
Civic Responsibility ◽  
Self Assessment ◽  
College Entry ◽  
Asian American Students ◽  
Racial Background ◽  
American Students

Using a statewide college student dataset, this chapter examines how the patterns in and predictors of civic responsibility development differ by students' racial background. Findings reveal that the level of civic responsibility does vary by student race. Results showed that Asian American students reported the lowest self-assessment of civic responsibility both at the point of college entry and in their junior or senior years, whereas African American students indicated the highest levels of civic responsibility both points of time. Findings also identify unique predictors of civic responsibility development for each racial group.

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