Reactions to Affirmative Action: Substance and Semantics

Reactions to Affirmative Action: Substance and Semantics

HEATHER GOLDEN School of Social Work New York University

STEVE HINKLE Miami University

FAYE CROSBY~ University of California, Santa Cruz

For both theoretical and practical reasons, researchers have sought to map the motivations that underlie people's support for or opposition to aftinnative action. In view of the amount of rhetoric surrounding the issues, it is possible that some of the apparent differences in degrees of support come from differences in how the words afirmafive action are interpreted. The present investigation shows that the meanings that people ascribe to aftir- mative action statistically predict their attitudes toward the policy, even after one accounts for demographic and related attitudinal factors. The implications of our findings are important in both applied and conceptual ways.

The year that Lyndon Johnson signed Executive Order 11246 was 1965. Amended and updated in subsequent presidencies, Executive Order 11246 requires all federal contractors (i.e., all organizations that receive payment from the federal government for goods or services) above a specified size to maintain affirmative action plans. Currently, affirmative action in employment is thought to touch the lives of one in four American workers (Tomasson, Crosby, & Herzberger, 1996).

For two and a half decades, affirmative action was not much in the public eye; but throughout the 1990s, affirmative action became a topic of increasing debate and controversy (Bowen & Bok, 1998; Crosby & Cordova, 1996; Reslun, 1998). As the controversy has become more heated, scholarly interest has also deepened. Increasingly, psychologists have sought to understand the dynamics of the debate over affirmative action (Kravitz et al., 1997; Skedsvold & Mann, 1996; Turner & Pratkanis, 1994), wanting to know why it is that some people like affirmative action while others dislike it.

The Policy and the Practice

As required by Executive Order 11246, every affirmative action plan involves two steps. In the first, an organization monitors its own behavior to determine the

'Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Faye Crosby, Psychology Depart- ment, University of California-Santa Cruz, Santa Cnrz, CA 95064. e-mail: [email protected]

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Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2001.31. 1, pp. 73-88. Copyright 0 2001 by V. H. Winston 8 Son, Inc. All rights reserved.

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extent to which its utilization of people in targeted classification matches the availability of qualified talent from the targeted classes. Organizations rely on techniques and statistics developed by the federal government and by organizations like the American Association for Affirmative Action to conduct analyses in specified job categories. During Step 1, a company might, for example, determine how many women it employs as managers (utilization) relative to the proportion of qualified managers who are women (availability).

If an organization discovers during the first step of its affirmative action review that it underutilizes women or people of color in any job category, it must move to the second step of the affirmative action plan. It must develop a corrective strategy. A company that underutilizes women as managers, for instance, might hold hiring units accountable for how they fill vacancies, might engage in extra outreach and recruiting efforts among female MBAs, or might design special training programs to help develop managerial talent among its own female labor force. As long as it can demonstrate that it is making a good-will effort to deploy its corrective strategy, an organization will not and cannot be penalized for failing to meet its goals by target deadlines (Holloway, 1989).

Several researchers have concluded that affirmative action has brought steady, albeit slow improvement for White women and for people of color in the paid labor market (Reskin, 1998). One method of assessing the impact of affirmative action is to compare federal contractors with other firms, controlling for the sector of the economy, in terms of, for instance, gender disparities in hiring and in pay (Leonard, 1986). Another technique is to look at the association between affirmative action practices and employment opportunities among firms in a given region (Konrad & Linnehan, 1995). Both techniques have demon- strated the effectiveness of affirmative action.

Reactions to Affirmative Action

In many, although certainly not all, business sectors, affirmative action is a favored policy. A survey of executives in large American corporations revealed endorsement of diversity efforts in general and of a f f i a t i v e action initiatives in particular (Wu & Taylor, 1996). Similarly, affirmative action is well liked by women of color who are managers and professionals in corporate America. A survey undertaken by Catalyst (1998) in 1997 and 1998 revealed that virtually all of the women endorsed the principle of affirmative action. Some respondents thought that affirmative action had not been put into practice as vigorously as they would have liked, yet over half of the African American women in the survey agreed that affirmative action has helped in recruitment, as did approximately 40% of the Latina women and approximately 30% of the Asian American women.

In academic circles, affmative action generates strong feelings. Prominent ethnic minority scholars like Stephen J. Carter (1991), for example, have opined

SEMANTICS AND SUBSTANCE IN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION 75

that affirmative action undermines the achievements of capable individuals of color whose accomplishments become suspect when others assume that they obtained their jobs through affirmative action. Thoughthl social psychological researchers like Madeline Heilman (1 994; Heilman, McCullough, & Gilbert, 1996) have applied the same reasoning to women. More vehement protests have been articulated by a number of conservatives, who think that affirmative action policies in education and employment constitute a form of reverse discrimination. According to these scholars, policies that give explicit attention to race and gender undermine the reward of true merit (D’Souza, 1991; Eastland, 1996; Thernstrom & Thernstrom, 1997) and make it unlikely for individuals to be judged by the “content of their characters,” rather than by their color or their gender (Steele, 1991). Diametrically opposed to the conservative opinions are analyses by liberal scholars like economist Barbara Bergmann (1996). Typical of Bergmann’s reasoning is the following observation:

In thinking about this issue, we have to ask whether African Amer- icans would be a less stigmatized group if there were fewer Black undergraduates at Yale, fewer Black Yale graduates, and fewer Black members of the Yale faculty. We also have to ask about those doing the stigmatizing. Has affirmative action created derog- atory feelings about Blacks in people who would otherwise have had perfectly friendly feelings toward them? . . . What is the evi- dence for all this extra stigmatizing? (p. 28)

Meanwhile, in the arena of politics and law, the controversy surrounding affirmative action sometimes reaches huge proportions. Ward Connerly, the Cal- ifornia businessman who spearheaded the passage of Proposition 209 in Califor- nia in 1996, has made it a personal crusade to travel the countryside in order to speak out against race-based privilege, which he often equates with affirmative action (Chavez, 1998). Recently, voters in the predominantly White state of Washington passed Initiative 200, which was closely modeled after California’s Proposition 209. Neither Proposition 209 nor Initiative 200 use the words “affirmative action” in their text, but in the media and other public forums, both opponents and proponents linked passage of the referenda to anti-affirmative action sentiment (Connerly, 1998; Kohl, 1998).

Factors Thought to Affect Reactions

Given the stakes, it is not surprising that more and more researchers are following the lead of Kravitz and his associates (Kravitz, 1995; Kravitz et al., in press; Kravitz & Platania, 1993), who document from surveys what factors are associated with support for or opposition to the policy. Typically, the factors that

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are assessed have been grouped into three major categories: self-interest, prejudice, and fairness concerns (Crosby & Cordova, 1996; Ferdman, Crosby, & Wingate, in press; Kravitz et al., 1997; Tomasson et al., 1996).

A number of studies have now shown that attitudes toward affirmative action can be predicted by self-interest, especially if self-interest is taken to include interest on behalf of one’s reference group (Kravitz et al., 1997). Women like affirmative action more than men do (Summers, 1995). People of color like affirmative action more than White people do (Harris, 1992). The extent to which someone imagines that affirmative action will affect personal outcomes is directly related to the person’s attitudes toward affirmative action (Kleugel & Smith, 1983). Concerning preferential treatment-which is not the same as affirmative action, but which bears a close relationship to it-White respondents oppose the policy when it is framed as discriminating against White people even more strongly than when it is framed as helping Black people (Fine, 1992).

Of course, the association between self-interest and attitudes is not perfectly isomorphic. Some women oppose affirmative action, as do some men of color. Indeed, some of the most vociferous and eloquent detractors from affirmative action are men of color (e.g., Carter, 1991; Sowell, 1990; Steele, 1991). The per- ception that one might be the personal beneficiary of affirmative action is itself related to and perhaps caused by other attitudes about one’s own ethnicity and about the role of ethnicity in how goods are distributed in our society (Schmer- mund, Sellers, Mueller, & Crosby, in press).

A related line of research has focused on the connection between prejudice and opposition to affirmative action among those who enjoy relative advantage in society. It is true that White men generally endorse affirmative action less strongly than do other groups, but it is also true that some White men are very positive about affirmative action while other White men are especially negative. In a national survey, Bob0 and Kleugel (1993) found that White Americans who attributed Black poverty to Black inadequacy were less likely than were others to support corrective measures like affirmative action. In a set of studies with smaller samples than that of Bob0 and Kleugel, a number of different researchers have documented the link between opposition to affirmative action on the one hand, and sexism (Tougas, Crosby, Joly, & Pelchat, 1995) and racism (Dovidio & Gaertner, 1996; Sidanius, Pratto, & Bobo, 1996) on the other hand. Hayes, Brief, Dietz, and Reizenstein (1998), for example, found in a field study that prejudiced White workers were less satisfied with their own promotional opportunities if they saw their organization as having strong affirmative action programs, while there was no association among nonprejudiced Whites.

Not all opposition to affirmative action derives from prejudice or self- interest. Some reactions to affirmative action are grounded in people’s attachment to fairness. As one study shows, endorsement of group-based remedies like affirmative action was significantly stronger among a sample of collectivistically


oriented Japanese participants than among a sample of individualistically oriented American participants (Ozawa, Crosby, & Crosby, 1996). The implication is that strong feelings about affmative action may spring from a strong belief in the ideal of individual merit. For those who subscribe to the notion that ours is a meritocracy, the concept of affirmative action may appear irrelevant at best, and at worst like a form of reverse discrimination (Carter, 1991; Sowell, 1990; Steele, 1991). Among those who feel that the realities of life diverge dramatically from the meritocratic ideal, on the other hand, affirmative action may appear to be the only sure way to advance toward equity of opportunity (Crosby, 1997; Haney & Hurtado, 1994). In short, it is probable that some citizens oppose affirmative action not because of prejudice nor because the policy would weaken the advantage of their reference group, but because they genuinely perceive affirmative action to be unfair. Similarly, it is probable that some citizens support affmative action not because of a bias against White males nor because it would strengthen the position of their reference group, but because they genuinely perceive affirmative action to be fair.

All three explanations for people’s reactions to affirmative action presume that people know what affirmative action is. Yet, given the excess of rhetoric about affirmative action (Opotow, 1996; Plous, 1996) and the dearth of definitions of affirmative action in the public discourse (Crosby & Cordova, 1996), it seems quite plausible that some of the controversy derives from misunderstand- ing or disagreement about what affirmative action entails. Among social psychologists, it is clear that the term affirmative action means different things to different people. For instance, Swim and Miller (1996) frame affirmative action in terms of retributions against White people. Heilman (1994) equates affirmative action with preferential treatment. Others (e.g., Clayton & Crosby, 1992) would take issue with such definitions.

Among the general public, too, how one frames the issues is important. Hams (1992) found that less than half of those polled in 1991 favored federal laws requiring racial preferences with no rigid quotas, while three quarters favored federal laws requiring affirmative action with no rigid quotas. A number of other studies, including samples of students (e.g., Nacoste, 1987; Nosworthy, Lea, & Lindsay, 1995; Summers, 1995), employees (Kravitz, 1995; Tougas et al., 1995), and personnel administrators (Davis & West, 1984), have shown that most people like equal opportunity and dislike quotas, set-asides, and other forms of apparent preferential treatment. To the degree that members of the public equate the practice of affirmative action with preferential treatment, they are unlikely to endorse it.

We are left to wonder about the link between justice and justifications. If reactions to affirmative action spring in part from how one sees the policy (e.g., as a monitoring system or as a quota system), it is still possible that perceptions are influenced by self-interest. If all White men understand affirmative action to

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be a system where quotas displace merit and if all Black people understand affirmative action to be a system that monitors behaviors to ensure that people of merit are employed, it would be misleading to say that reactions to affirmative action are determined by one’s definition. But if one’s definition of affirmative action influences one’s reaction to the policy, even after one’s gender and ethnicity have been taken into account, it is possible to infer that self-interest is not the only force at work.

The Present Study

We can infer from the published polls that people’s understanding of affrma- tive action influence their appraisals of it. When people are led to believe that affirmative action is unjustified preferences, they do not like the policy very much; otherwise, they do like it (Ferdman et al., in press; Kravitz et al., 1997).

These inferences leave important questions unanswered. It seems likely that demographic factors, such as gender and ethnicity, that influence a person’s per- ception of what affirmative action is also influence how much the person likes affirmative action. For example, it may be that White males are motivated to dislike affirmative action and are motivated to see it as reverse discrimination, while White females and minorities are motivated to like affirmative action and to see it as nondiscriminatory.

Knowing how people’s definitions of affirmative action contribute to their endorsement or rejection of the policy, over and above what we know from their gender and ethnicity, is important for several reasons. At a practical level, the knowledge is useful: We can educate people about what affirmative action really is, but we cannot change their gender or ethnicity. At a more theoretical level, to know the extent to which definitions, rather than demographics, determine endorsement is of fundamental interest in the endeavor to link personal life and public attitudes (Crosby & Clayton, 1986; Kinder & Sanders, 1990; Kinder & Sears, 1981; Sidanius et al., 1996; Sniderman, Tetlock, & Carmines, 1993). To find that people’s endorsement or rejection of affirmative action is not simply tied to their gender and ethnicity would be consistent with the symbolic-politics position. The position of symbolic-politics theorists like Donald Kinder and David Sears is that American citizens often react to symbols of their value sys- tems even when their reactions are not in their own personal self interest. For example, Americans who value independence and individual initiative may endorse policies that seem to symbolize these values (e.g., free trade), and they reject policies that appear to be contrary to these values (e.g., welfare payments).

To address the issue of how definitions influence reactions to affirmative action, we conducted new analyses of a data set collected in 1993. The data set indicated how a random sample of ordinary American citizens, whose demographic characteristics were known, defined affirmative action and how strongly


they liked or disliked the policy. Our analytic strategy was to document the extent to which people’s attitudes depended on their definitions of affirmative action, after taking into account demographic information and other related factors such as political affiliation.

Method

During May and June 1993, the Northwestern University Survey Laboratory (NUSL) sampled 1,053 English-speaking adults via telephone. Approximately 3,500 telephone numbers were formed using random-digit dialing. Sampled numbers were called as many as 30 times, but the modal number of calls was 1 and the median was 3. NUSL estimated that the completion rate was certainly over 53%, and the refusal rate was only 14%. The margin of error was 3 percent- age points.

The final sample including only people who completed all questions of rele- vance to us, contained 631 women and 422 men over the age of 18 years. The median age of the respondents was 42 years. Non-White respondents were inten- tionally oversampled so that the survey included 302 people of color and 706 White people.

The entire interview lasted about 25 min and contained 121 questions. Sev- eral items were standard demographic questions. We coded for gender, ethnicity (ethnic minority or White), age, educational level (on an 1 R-point scale), and household income (under $40,000 per year or over $40,000 per year).

Of special interest for our purposes were three attitudinal questions that we included in the omnibus survey. One question on the interview read, There is a lot of talk about affirmative action today, but not many people define it. Using a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means You know very little and 10 means You know a lot, how would you rate how much you know about what affirmative action is and how it operates?

We refer to this variable as knowledge. If the respondent said that he or she knew nothing about affirmative action, a 0 was coded and the interviewer then said, “Even though you’ve told me that you do not know anything about affirmative action, may I please read the next two questions to you and see if you have an answer?” If the respondent gave a number between 1 and 10, the interviewer proceeded to the next question without preamble.

Our second question presented a forced choice. Respondents were asked, Which of the following two statements comes closer to defining the policy of affirmative action for you? The first definition is: Affirmative action occurs when an organization monitors itself to make sure that it employs and promotes qualified minorities and White women in proportion to their numbers. The second definition is: Affirmative action occurs when the government forces organizations to meet quotas for minorities and White women. We term this variable definition.

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Our fmal question asked,

To what extent do you favor or oppose the policy of affirmative action? Using a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means You strong& oppose affirmative action, and 10 means You strongly favor affirmative action, how would you rate your opinion?

If the respondent asked “Which policy?,” the interviewer said, “Whatever it means to you.” We call this variable endorsement.

Of related interest were answers to several other attitudinal items, which were made available to us by the NUSL and which we had reason to believe might vary with attitudes toward affirmative action. There was a measure of how satisfied people felt with their standard of living (SOLSAT). Political orientation was also measured on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 (conservative) to 7 (liberal). Finally, Jane Mansbridge of Northwestern University made available to us her data on self-identification as a feminist. We constructed a 3-point variable (FEMLABEL) to gauge the extent to which individuals labeled themselves as feminists and another 3-point index (FEMACT) of the respondents’ involvement in feminist actions. In both cases, the higher the number, the more feminist the orientation.

Results

How Do People Define Affirmative Action?

Did the residents of Chicago and environs understand affirmative action to be a quota system, or did they see affirmative action as a system whereby organizations monitor their employment practices‘? In the total sample, 48.0% of the respondents opted for the first definition of affirmative action-seeing it as a monitoring system whereby organizations make sure that they utilize qualified people of color and White women in proportion to their availability. Another 40.4% of the respondents saw affirmative action as a quota system, and 11.6% avoided either definitional option. Of the respondents who answered the question, 54.3% defined affirmative action as a monitoring system, while 45.7% defined it as a quota system.

How do definitions of affirmative action relate to demographic and attitudinal factors? One might expect White women and people of color more frequently than White men to envision affirmative action as a monitoring system. Interestingly, the difference was small: 56.0% of the White participants and 51 .O% of the non-White participants who answered the question defined affirmative action as a monitoring system. Slicing along gender lines, 56.6% of the men and 52.7% of the women who answered the question defined affirmative action as a monitoring system.


Indeed, looking at the demographic variables-including age, education, work status, household income, source of news information, and home owner- ship status-only education bore a statistically significant relation to choice of definition. The average years of education of respondents was significantly higher among those who equated affirmative action with a monitoring system (M = 13.9) than among those who equated affirmative action with a quota system ( M = 13.3), t(923) = 4.13, p < .0001. This relation held when the sample was restricted to White citizens, but failed to reach significance when the sample was restricted to people of color. Furthermore, the relationship between education and definition was highly significant 0, < .001) among women, but only marginally significant 0, < .02) among men.

Potentially relevant social attitudes were no more predictive of people’s definitions of affirmative action than were the demographic variables. Looking at the various attitudes that seemed likely to bear a relationship to affirmative action, only two showed a statistically reliable link. First, political orientation distin- guished a person’s definition of affirmative action, but only among some sub- samples. Women who defined affirmative action as a monitoring system were significantly more liberal ( M = 4.18) than were other women ( M = 3.74), t(523) =

3.37, p < .001. Among men, the comparison failed to reach statistical significance, but the means were in the same direction. Second, for the entire sample, the FEMACT scores were significantly higher among the monitoring group ( M = 2.05) than among the quota group ( M = 1.86), (918) = 4 . 0 4 , ~ < .0001. However, among people of color, FEMACT scores did not differ between these two groups, even though the differences were in the same direction.

How Do Definitions and Other Attitudes Toward Afflrmative Action Interrelate?

As might be expected, the three focal variables of our study-selected definition of affirmative action, self-rated knowledge about affirmative action, and endorsement of affirmative action-were interrelated. People who saw affirmative action as a monitoring system were more knowledgeable ( M = 5.50), according to self-assessment, than were people who saw affirmative action as a quota system ( M = 4.83), t(919) = 3 . 3 8 , ~ < .001, and remained so when the sample was limited to women, to White people, or to people of color. When the sample was restricted to men, the relationship failed to reach significance 0, = .08), but the means were in the same direction.

Those who saw affirmative action as a monitoring system felt significantly more positive about affirmative action ( M endorsement = 6.80) than did those who thought of affirmative action as a quota system ( M endorsement = 5.72). This difference remained reliable when we limited the sample to men, women, or White people, t(896) = 5.98, p < .0001. With the sample restricted to non-Whites,

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the difference in mean endorsement scores approached conventional significance levels in the same direction.

What about the relationship between knowledge and endorsement? The relation was weak among White people (r = .04, ns) and among men (r = .04, ns). When the sample was restricted to women, Pearson’s r increased to .23 (p < .01). When the sample was restricted to people of color, the correlation was even higher(r= .31,p< .Ol).

Endorsement of Affirmative Action

Asked how strongly they favored or opposed affirmative action, more respondents indicated approval than disapproval for affirmative action. Only 17.7% of the citizens in our study scored below the scale midpoint (scores of 1 to 4), while 55.5% scored above it (scores of 6 to 10). About one quarter of the respondents picked the exact midpoint (5 on the 1 1-point scale). The median score was 6.00, and the mean score was 6.22. It bears noting that these figures show a much stronger endorsement of affirmative action among average American citizens than would be expected on the basis of the current political rhetoric, especially as framed by conservatives.

The central issue for the present study is to determine the extent to which the definition of affirmative action as a monitoring system statistically contributes to a positive endorsement of the policy, relative to other variables measured. To determine how much the definition statistically influences endorsement, we conducted two different multiple regressions in which the criterion variable was endorsement. We included in the regression only those individuals for whom we had complete information on all of the predictor variables as well as for the criterion, thus reducing the number of people in the sample to 664. In the first (step- wise) regression, we entered 1 1 potential predictor variables, including gender, ethnicity, age, education, household income, political orientation, SOLSAT, FEMLABEL, FEMACT, knowledge, and definition. The resulting equation was significant (adjusted R2 = .140), F = 22.54, p < .00001. The only variables that related reliably to the criterion of endorsement were gender, with females endorsing affirmative action more than males (B = -0.13); ethnicity, with people of color endorsing affirmative action more than White people (B = -0.1 3); political orientation, with endorsement increasing in association with liberalism ( B = 0.2 10); and Definition, with those who selected the monitoring definition endorsing affirmative action more than those who selected the quota definition (B = -0.213). Of the factors that predicted attitudes toward affirmative action, definition was the most important. The results of the first regression show us that the definition of affirmative action is important, even when other associated factors (e.g., ethnicity) are taken into account.

In the second regression, we entered all of the potential predictors except definition in one block and then entered definition in the second block,


AR2 = .04 1, F = 3 1.5 1, p < .OOOO 1. This showed that people’s definitions of affirmative action influenced their evaluation of the policy over and above the other factors.

Discussion

Our findings have both practical and conceptual importance. Consider the practical level first. In a highly publicized speech in which he spelled out his policy on affirmative action, President Clinton remarked,

I am absolutely convinced we cannot restore economic opportunity or solve our social problems unless we find a way to bring the American people together. To bring our people together, we must openly and honestly deal with the issues that divide us. (Clinton, 1995, p. 1256)

Honest and open dealing must surely begin with a clear exposition of the terms of the debate. When clear definitions are agreed upon, the distance between the supporters and opponents of affirmative action may decrease.

During the years that have passed since our data set was collected, some progress has been made in defining terms. The American Psychological Associa- tion, the American Sociological Association, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology have, for example, all produced explanatory publica- tions on the topic of affirmative action (American Psychological Association, 1996; Kravitz et al., 1997; Reskin, 1998). But the clarity of vision that they bring to their consistencies is not being offered to the majority of concerned citizens. The results of our study highlight the great need to educate the general public about the specifics of affirmative action and other important social issues.

At a conceptual level, our findings are also important. The Chicago survey casts light on scholarly debates over the role of self-interest, prejudice, and con- cepts of fairness in people’s reactions to affirmative action. While self-interest and prejudice, as well as the degree of attachment to the ideal of individual merit, do surely covary with people’s reactions to affirmative action, something more mundane-simple definitions-may also be at work.

One quite promising line for future research would be to tease apart the causal relations among definitions, attitudes, and personal experiences. In our cross- sectional survey, a strong association was found between definitions and attitudes. While it seems plausible to assume that definitions influenced attitudes, it may well be that attitudes also influenced definitions. Alternately, it may be that both attitudes and definitions were influenced by people’s experiences with affirmative action. It is easy to imagine an individual who had worked in an organization with a visible affirmative action plan and who had a bad experience in

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the organization. Such an individual might dislike affirmative action, but might never examine why. When forced in an interview to chose between a definition that equates affirmative action with quotas and one that equates affirmative action with monitoring, such an individual might select the former definition simply because the term “quotas” cames a negative connotation.

Of course, the best way to examine the causal sequence of experiences, attitudes, and understanding would be to conduct experiments or quasi-experiments. One might randomly assign White people and people of color to read or hear different “justifications” of the policy. One group could encounter a description of affirmative action that emphasizes the mild nature of the policy (explaining that it is a monitoring system), while another group could encounter a description of affirmative action that emphasizes the strong need for the policy (explaining that prejudice is still alive). A third group could encounter a persuasive plea for the goodness of the policy, based on how effective and popular it is. A fourth group, encountering no message, could serve as a control. If attitudes depend on definitions, then the first group would display more positive attitudes toward affirmative action than would the other groups, who would not differ from each other. If definitions follow from attitudes, then the last group would have a less positive attitude than would the other three groups, who would not differ from each other.

Another approach to the same issues would be to document the effects of different explanatory characterizations of affirmative action (i.e., in terms of how it operates or why it is needed) among people who have a strong or a weak need for social hierarchy. Following the reasoning of Sidanius and his associates (Sidanius et al., 1996), one would expect persuasive appeals (pro or con) to have more effect on the attitudes of people who have a low attachment to social dominance than on the attitudes of others.

A final line of experimental research would be to place individuals in a situa- tion where they are selected for something positive, such as an award or a chance to participate in an interesting activity. One third of the subjects would be told that they have been selected because of their merit. One third would be told that they have been selected because of a quota system. One third would be told that they have been selected because careful monitoring revealed that qualified people from their group were being selected less often than one would expect by chance. One could then measure how much the people like the system and how proud they feel about their accomplishments.

To date, there have been several experiments that have looked at the effects of unjustified preferential treatment on people’s feelings and attitudes (e.g., Heilman, 1994; Heilman et al., 1996). Yet there have been virtually no experiments that look at the effects of affmative action on people’s ideas. Based on survey work, like the study reported here or like the studies of Kravitz et al. (1997), experiments could make a contribution to our understanding of why some people embrace a social policy, while others shun it.


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Reactions to Affirmative Action: Substance and Semantics

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