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Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6351-7790
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
Psychology
Year Degree Awarded
2023
Month Degree Awarded
May
First Advisor
Brian Lickel
Second Advisor
Evelyn Mercado
Third Advisor
Allecia Reid
Fourth Advisor
Tatishe Nteta
Subject Categories
Political Science | Social and Behavioral Sciences | Social Psychology
Abstract
The killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 instigated one of the largest social movements in the United States history. Despite the wealth of research that has evaluated the efficacy of social movements using different social outcomes (Andrews, 1997; Biggs & Andrews, 2015; Branton et al., 2015; Enos et al., 2019; Gillion, 2012; Schwartz, 2016), less attention has been given to how social movements that concern racial issues impact racial attitudes (Riley & Peterson, 2020). Thus, the current research aimed to examine how Americans’ racial attitudes shifted in the period immediately following the onset of BLM protests. We particularly anchored on two competing theoretical perspectives on public opinion mobilization (i.e., Elite Opinion Theory and Theory of Activated Mass Opinion) to show how our findings of rapid shifts in racial attitudes is congruent with the Theory of Activated Mass Opinion that posits how bottom-up social movements can mobilize public opinion (Lee, 2002). We further build upon the cognitive framework of Zaller’s (1992) Receive-Accept-Sample (RAS) model to investigate how different individual, social, and contextual variables shape White Americans’ shifts in racial attitudes in this context. We found White Americans’ shifts in attitudes toward Blacks (but not Whites) significantly varied as a function of political party affiliation. Furthermore, we found evidence for the significant impacts of social and contextual factors (e.g., social network, neighborhood racial diversity, BLM protest proximity) that operate as bottom-up mechanisms in shifts in racial attitudes. We discuss how the current findings provide a consistent account to the core arguments of the Theory of Activated Mass Opinion (Lee, 2002).
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/33822677
Recommended Citation
Suh, Se Min, "EXAMINING SHIFTS IN RACIAL ATTITUDES IN THE AFTERMATH OF GEORGE FLOYD’S DEATH AND THE 2020 BLM PROTESTS" (2023). Doctoral Dissertations. 2861.
https://doi.org/10.7275/33822677
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/2861
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