514 Prejudice, Racism, and Discrimination
example, might justify opposition to affirmative action prog-
rams benefiting Blacks by saying that they violate the value
of equality by favoring one group over others.
The constructs of symbolic and modern racism are similar
to aversive racism. In both cases, the ambivalence arises from
negative feelings toward Black people versus core American
values. In both cases, White Americans dislike and avoid
racial prejudice but seek indirect ways to manifest their neg-
ative feelings toward Black Americans. All three racism
constructs are interested in predicting interpersonal behavior,
with symbolic and modern racism being used mainly to pre-
dict political attitudes and behavior, typically in surveys.
Symbolic and modern racism are assumed to emerge from
early political socialization and not to be based on personal
experience, personal competition, or direct, personal, eco-
nomic threats to Whites from Blacks. Unlike aversive racism,
however, items and scales to assess symbolic and modern
racism have been constructed by their adherents and have
proven very popular in survey and experimental research on
prejudice by psychologists in the late twentieth century.
McConahay (1986), for example, presented a Modern
Racism Scale (MRS) and an Old-Fashioned Racism Scale
(OFRS), with moderate, positive correlations between the
two, and items loading on one or the other factor in ex-
ploratory factor analyses. Whereas the OFRS was reactive
(i.e., White U.S. respondents’ scores were lower when it was
administered by a Black experimenter than by a White one),
the MRS was nonreactive (at least in the 1980s). Items from
symbolic or modern racism scales became the standard mea-
sure of prejudice toward Blacks in the United States in the
1980s and 1990s and are still frequently used in this regard.
In the twenty-first century, newer scales such as the Blatant
and Subtle Prejudice Scales (Pettigrew & Meertens, 1995) or
the Social Dominance Orientation Scale (Pratto, Sidanius,
Stallworth, & Malle, 1994), both of which are discussed later,
are perhaps more apt to become the preferred, “paper-and-
pencil” measures of prejudice.
Sniderman and Tetlock (1986), themselves prominent po-
litical psychologists, have strongly criticized the constructs
and measurement of symbolic and modern racism. Among
other things, they criticized symbolic and modern racism for
being unclear as to the causal relation between anti-Black
affect and core American values, for equating political policy
preferences (e.g., opposition to busing school children or
affirmative action) with racism itself, and for suggesting that
old-fashioned racism no longer existed in the United States.
Sniderman and Tetlock even contended that symbolic racism
theory was unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific. The MRS,
they also charged, was confounded with political conser-
vatism. Sniderman and his colleagues showed that political
conservatism related not to rejection and prejudice toward
out-group members but rather to greater support for those,
whether from the in-group or out-group, who behaved in a
manner consistent with politically conservative principles
(e.g., Sniderman, Piazza, Tetlock, & Kendrick, 1991).
Although proponents of symbolic and modern racism have
not thoroughly explored the presumed link to values, Biernat,
Vescio, and Theno (1996) did so in a series of studies. For ex-
ample, after completing Rokeach’s Value Survey, White U.S.
undergraduates were asked to rate the extent to which four tar-
get groups, including Black Americans, supported or violated
their values. Whether considering their top value or their
hierarchy of values, Black Americans were perceived as
less supportive of their values than were White Americans;
however, there was no difference in perceived violation of val-
ues for these two target groups. Likewise, differences in rat-
ings of White versus Black support and violation of values
correlated with measures of modern racism as well as pro- and
anti-Black attitudes, although these correlations were consis-
tently modest in magnitude. Consistent with theories of sym-
bolic and modern racism, Biernat et al. showed that White
individuals who scored high on the Protestant work ethic and
had their values made salient rated a Black employee less
positively than a White employee when they violated the
work ethic.
Thus, Biernat, Vescio, and Theno’s (1996) research par-
tially supported models of symbolic and modern racism. How-
ever, if violating core American values is indeed one of the two
key components of symbolic and modern racism, one would
expect to find much stronger relationships than they did.
Biernat et al. also questioned the assumption that modern-
symbolic racism is ablendingof negative affect toward Blacks
and core American values, such as individualism. Their analy-
ses suggested that egalitarianism is a stronger predictor than
individualism of intergroup attitudes and that combining neg-
ative affect with value measures added little beyond the sepa-
rate components in predicting responses to an out-group
member in their studies of race and sexual orientation.
In the ambivalence approach presented next the focus
shifts to conflict between pro- and anti-Black attitudes linked
to values as the determinant of positive and negative reac-
tions to Blacks by White Americans.Ambivalence AmplificationKatz and Hass (1988) contended that most White Americans
hold both positive and negative attitudes about Black
Americans that are relatively independent of one another. A
White American who endorses positive statements about
Blacks on a “Pro-Black scale” is neither more nor less likely