Pop Culture Resentment: Developing an Alternative Measure of Racial Attitudes

• In Event: Measurement in Survey Research

Abstract

Survey research on racial attitudes is made more difficult by social desirability effects. Some respondents may disguise their true attitudes to avoid being labeled as racist, or they may change their answers to other questions if they believe the study is focused on race. Measures such as the Racial Resentment scale ask less blunt questions, but still transparently focus on racial attitudes. In this project, I propose and test a more subtle measure, using participants’ popular culture preferences.

Preferences in music, movies and TV are generally regarded as a matter of personal taste, but popular culture is also inextricably linked with race. If a person prefers Taylor Swift to Nicki Minaj, for instance, this may in part reflect their racial attitudes. Leveraging this insight, I use survey and experiment data to test whether pop culture attitudes are correlated with traditional measures of racial attitudes. I also test whether popular culture attitudes predict key political outcomes, such as attitudes toward welfare and vote choice in the 2018 US election. Finally, I test whether respondents are less likely to believe a study is focused on race when they are asked about racial attitudes using the popular culture scale, rather than traditional measures.

Author

• Brianna A. Smith, United States Naval Academy