Black people are convicted more for being black than for being poor: The role of social norms and cultural prejudice on biased racial judgments.

Black and poor people are more frequently convicted of committing crimes. However, the specific role played by skin color and social class in convicting a person has yet to be clarified. This article aims to elucidate this issue by proposing that belonging to a lower social class facilitates the conviction of black targets and that this phenomenon is because information about social class dissimulates racial bias. Study 1 (N = 160) demonstrated that information about belonging to the lower classes increases agreement with a criminal suspect being sentenced to prison only when described as being black. Furthermore, Studies 2 (N = 170) and 3 (N = 174) show that the anti-prejudice norm inhibits discrimination against the black target when participants were asked to express individual racial prejudice, but not when they expressed cultural racial prejudice. Finally, Study 4 (N = 134) demonstrated that lower-class black targets were discriminated against to a greater degree when participants expressed either individual or cultural prejudice and showed that this occurs when racial and class anti-prejudice norms are salient. The results suggest that social class negatively affects judgments of black targets because judgment based on lower class mitigates the racist motivation of discrimination.

A hierarchical (multicomponent) model of in-group identification: adaptation of a measure to the Brazilian context.

The aim of this study is to adapt the multidimensional in-group identification scale (MGIS) to the Brazilian context by gathering evidence of its psychometric properties. A total of 663 people from two samples participated in the study. In sample 1, we measured the identification of Brazilians with the region of the country where they live. In sample 2, we measured the identification of students with the university which they attend. Confirmatory factor analyses were performed on both samples to compare the models previously proposed by the original authors of the measure. The obtained results confirmed the validity of the hierarchical and multidimensional factor structure proposed by the original authors. The scale proposed here can be used to measure multiple dimensions of in-group identification in Brazil.