As the reality of racial injustice has forged a deeper path into American conscious ness in the past year, one of the questions for many is whether the public outcry sparked by police brutality against Black people will lead to lasting change. This is not the first time in the country’s history when racial tensions have run high, and psychologist Michael Kraus, PhD, an associate professor at the Yale School of Management, is exploring some of the psychological barriers that may be limiting real progress toward racial equality.
His research suggests that some of the lack of progress is because most Americans vastly underestimate the severity of racial economic inequality.
In a 2019 study, Kraus and his colleagues found that, on average, respondents estimated that for every $100 of wealth held by a White family, a Black family has $90. In fact, federal statistics show that the Black family has $10. While respondents were highly inaccurate when guessing Black wealth, which includes assets such as savings and real estate, they were only slightly more accurate when predicting income for Black families. Kraus also found that these misperceptions crossed political, gender, and racial lines; all respondents minimized the racial wealth gap.
People also typically predict that education will equalize the differences in White and Black wealth, but this is not necessarily the case. For example, the median wealth for Black families with postgraduates as heads of households was $84,000 in 2011, compared with $293,100 for White families with the same level of education. “These more educated Black families are usually starting off with less wealth, so education is less of a boon and also likely to lead to more debt,” Kraus says.
His team is now designing interventions aimed at changing these illusions so more people will know the true magnitude of racism’s impact on the economic fortunes of Americans. Kraus talked to the Monitor about how those interventions are working and how psychologists and policymakers can inspire change.
Why do Americans tend to underestimate the Black-White wealth gap?
One of the consistent predictors of this tendency is the belief that we live in a just world. The American dream promises that if we strive and keep trying, people will eventually be rewarded. For White high-income Americans, this thinking can legitimize their position in society; they earned a wealth advantage on their merit rather than by benefiting from racism. For low-income people, this belief in a just world can provide hope that their situation will improve. Our data also suggest that most people adhere to the idea that our country naturally makes linear progress toward greater equality, almost like this is inevitable and guaranteed. The reality is that we can’t assume moral progress because societal benefits are likely to be unequally applied to people.
Do people make the same estimation errors about the wealth of other racial and ethnic groups?
We found similar patterns of overestimation regarding the wealth of Latinx Americans compared with White Americans. In another study, people overestimated the wealth of Asian Americans as well, but to a much smaller degree. In some of our research, we found that people often viewed Asian Americans as one group of “model minorities” who are college-educated and highly skilled, but this doesn’t take into account the many subgroups of Asian Americans who have come to the United States through other paths. They may have escaped difficult circumstances in their home countries and immigrated here with less possibility for economic success. For example, 1.3 million Asian Americans in the United States are undocumented immigrants.
What happened when you experimented with interventions aimed at helping people estimate the racial wealth gap more accurately?
We found that, despite our best efforts, it was pretty difficult to change people’s minds. In one study, participants read an ostensible New York Times article about high levels of racism persisting in society, but people still significantly underestimated the current wealth gap. In another experiment, we offered to pay people $100 for accurately estimating wealth for Black and White families, and the participants were given the opportunity to access accurate statistics online to inform their guess. But this approach generated only marginally greater accuracy. Even though they had access to accurate statistics, people may have chosen not to look, thought the information was wrong, or not believed the data they found.
What are the implications for psychologists?
We need to look at human interactions through the lens of racism. A researcher studying how members of different racial groups get along, for example, could set up a lab experiment in which two people are randomly assigned to different groups and asked to cooperate within those groups, but in the real world, racial groups have a history that exists far outside the immediate context of the experiment. To better understand racism and racial inequality, psychologists should study people in the context of a system of laws and economics that advantages White people.
How can your findings inform policy?
We are in a moment in history when people are more willing to learn about the magnitude of the racial wealth gap, but our studies suggest that providing data is not enough to convince the public that this is a persistent problem. Through research, I aim to develop tools for policymakers and educators that focus on how to inform people about racial inequality, such as which arguments are most persuasive and the counterarguments to anticipate. My hope is that improving our education strategies related to this topic will increase motivation for bolder, more progressive policies.
