Pathways to Equity: Understanding Message Effects Across Differential Policy Racialization

Given the role of racial prejudice in justifying and exacerbating systemic racial inequalities, scholars have long been puzzled by how to effectively influence public opinion in support of policies that would strengthen racial equity. Social welfare scholar Kristen Brock-Petroshius and her colleagues Neil Lewis (social psychology) and Jeff Niederdeppe (communications) will seek to better understand how communication about racialized policy issues operates. They will evaluate the effectiveness of race- and class-based messaging strategies across racialized policy domains and a diverse sample of respondents. The main goals of this study are to advance theory and evidence by examining (1) the effects of race, class, and race-and-class based messages on attitudes towards equity policies, (2) how these effects differ across policy domains, racial identity, and political ideology, and (3) possible moderators and mediators (e.g., racial group empathy, causal attribution, zero-sum thinking, and racial resentment) that explain differences in message effects.