Negational racial identity and presidential voting preferences

Previous research suggests that narrow identification with one’s own racial group impedes coalition building among minorities. Consistent with this research, the 2008 Democratic primary was marked by racial differences in voting preferences: Black voters overwhelmingly preferred Barack Obama, a Black candidate, and Latinos and Asians largely favored Hillary Clinton, a White candidate. We investigated one approach to overcoming this divide: highlighting one’s negational identity. In two experiments simulating primary polling procedures, Asians and Latinos randomly assigned to think of and categorize themselves in negational terms (i.e., being non-White) were more likely to vote for Obama than participants focused on their affirmational identity (i.e, being Asian or Latino), who showed the typical preference for Clinton. This shift in voting preference was partially mediated by warmer attitudes towards other minority groups. These results suggest that negational identity is a meaningful source of social identity and demonstrate that whether one thinks about ‘‘who one is” versus ‘‘who one is not” has far-reaching impact for real-world decisions. 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Cooperation between minority racial groups has been rare despite sharing similar experiences with discrimination (e.g., Johnson & Oliver, 1989; McClain & Tauber, 1998). For example, nearly 57 percent of Latino immigrants who participated in a recent survey felt that few or almost no Blacks could be trusted and nearly 59 percent believed that few or almost no Blacks were hardworking (McClain et al, 2006). Similarly, Asian–Americans are often seen by other minority races as ‘‘unscrupulous, crafty, and devious in business” (National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1994). Lacking positive attitudes toward each other, Asians, Blacks, and Latinos in the United States often compete over material and political resources, preventing them from formally and informally building coalitions (e.g., Meier & Stewart, 1991; Kim & Lee, 2001). In fact, in one survey both Blacks and Latinos felt closer to Whites than to each other (Dyer, Vedlitz, & Worchel, 1989). In the 2008 Democratic primary, despite minor differences in the political agenda of the two frontrunners, Black voters overwhelmingly preferred Barack Obama, a Black candidate, whereas Latinos and Asians largely favored Hillary Clinton, a White candidate (Goldstein, 2008). Scholars have explained the dearth of alliances among racial minorities through processes of social identification. Sociologists, such as Blumer (1958), have focused on beliefs about the rights and resources that group members are entitled to based on their group’s perceived social standing and past injustices (see also Bobo & Hutchings, 1996); members of a minority group may believe that they have been uniquely oppressed and demand commensurate redress for their particular group. Psychologists, most notably social identity theorists, have emphasized the processes through which identification with social categories induces intergroup behavior, with mere membership in a group driving in-group favoritism (e.g., Tajfel, Billing, Bundy, & Flament, 1971). Still others have linked interracial competition to group size, suggesting that members of numerical minorities display both higher in-group identification and more intergroup discrimination (e.g., Leonardelli & Brewer, 2001). From these perspectives, narrow identification with one’s own group can be an obstacle to interracial cooperation among minorities. Consequently, one strategy for increasing cooperation involves offering competing groups a superordinate identity (Sherif, 1966). Gaertner, Mann, Murrell, & Dovidio (1989) found that creating a superordinate identity for two competing teams, by asking participants in both teams to create a unique name for themselves, significantly reduced inter-group bias in later group interaction. This recategorization strategy, however, has not always been effective at the societal scale. For example, the superordinate identity ‘‘Democrats” failed to unite a racially fragmented constituency in the 2008 Democratic primary. Indeed, a Gallup poll in March 2008 showed that 28 percent of Clinton supporters and 19 percent of Obama supporters indicated they would vote for Republican candidate John McCain over their fellow democrat in the general election (Newport, 2008). 0022-1031/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2008.08.001 * Corresponding author. Fax: +1 416 978 4629. E-mail address: [email protected] (C.-B. Zhong). Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44 (2008) 1563–1566