Anti-White Bias Scale May Have Health Implications for Blacks

Health care professionals want to know why fewer blacks than whites seek radiation treatment after being diagnosed with cancer. A scale developed by two UNC Wilmington psychologists, initially to measure anti-white attitudes among blacks, may uncover the reasons.

"It is expected that the greater anti-white bias score an individual receives, the less trust in the health care system and white health care providers. Thus, high levels of anti-white bias may lead blacks to be more reluctant to seek health care or seek health care only when the symptoms are extreme," said James Johnson who developed the Johnson-Lecci Scale with his fellow UNCW psychology professor, Len Lecci. If approved, they will be testing this hypothesis as part of a $3.5 million dollar grant that New Hanover Regional Medical Center has proposed to the National Cancer Institute.

Johnson explained that the Johnson-Lecci Scale is the first of its kind. "Several scales have been developed to measure anti-black attitudes, but none have been developed to accurately measure anti-white attitudes," he said. "I am hoping to shed light on the fact that there is a great deal of variation on how blacks perceive whites."

Since the scale's March publication in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Johnson has received much positive feedback thanking him for the new scale. "This scale has strong implications for future research," said Johnson. In addition to his research with NHRMC, Johnson plans to use the scale to predict vocational and academic success in blacks.

The scale is based on a test made up of 20 self-reported statements from black students enrolled in a historically black college in the South. The students were asked to report statements of attitudes and beliefs that a close friend of theirs who 'really dislikes whites' would be likely to express or enact. The statements reported include a variety of attitudes and beliefs that reflect anti-white bias, such as, "I believe most whites think they are superior to blacks."

After a second pool of respondents at the college rated the accuracy of the initial respondents' statements, the statements were reduced from 187 to 20 to be used for the final version of the test. Individuals using the test to measure their own anti-white bias would rate the extremity of their agreement or disagreement with such statements by selecting 'strongly agree,' 'agree,' 'disagree' or 'strongly disagree.'

"Although other scales have been developed, the researchers in those studies simply flipped anti-black statements reported by whites and tried to apply the same statements to blacks with anti-white attitudes," Johnson stated. "This doesn't work because the experiences of those who are racist against blacks are very different than the experiences of those who are racist toward whites," he explained. "Any measure of black anti-white bias must be based on the perspectives and experiences of black people," Johnson added.

Another distinguishing factor between the Johnson-Lecci Scale and others is that "prior to this scale, measures of discriminatory attitudes have typically been limited by the fact that they considered racism to be the only theme underlying those attitudes," Lecci explained. "By employing confirmatory factor analysis, an advanced statistical technique, we have been able to construct a more complex measure that captures four distinct themes."

The Johnson-Lecci Scale employs the themes of in-group directed stigmatization and discriminatory expectations (e.g., "I believe that most whites would harm blacks if they could get away with it"), out-group directed negative beliefs, (e.g., "I believe that the success of a white person is due to their color"), negative views towards in-group/out-group relations (e.g., "I have referred to mixed couples as 'sell outs'") and negative verbal expressions toward whites (e.g., "I have insulted a white person.").

"Each of these themes represents potentially important additional information that can help us to predict if an individual is likely to interpret an action as discriminatory and even whether or not they will respond to that perceived discrimination," Lecci stated.