White Americans’ Impending Doom? How Changing the Narrative Surrounding the Majority-Minority Shift Can Attenuate Perceived Threat Among White Americans and Reduce Hostility and Negative Affect Toward Minority Outgroups

Since the late 2000s, Americans have participated in discourse surrounding the “majority-minority shift.” The present narrative of the majority-minority shift suggests that White Americans, compared to people of all other races and ethnicities in the U.S., will make up a racial and ethnic minority in the U.S. near the years 2040-2050 (Colby & Ortman, 2017; Frey, 2018). Several studies have examined both how the majority-minority shift narrative threatens White Americans and the negative downstream effects that feelings of threat often lead to (Bai & Federico, 2019; Craig & Richeson, 2014a; 2014b; 2014c; Craig & Richeson, 2017; Craig, Rucker, & Richeson, 2018; Danbold & Huo, 2015; Major, Blodorn, & Major Blascovich, 2018; Smeekes & Verkuyten, 2014; Wohl, Branscombe, & Reysen, 2010). However, little if any research has investigated ways of reducing the psychological threat that White Americans may experience as a result of their perception of an impending demographic and cultural shift. The purpose of the present research is to investigate three key questions: (Q1) Given the threat that White Americans perceive as imposed by the majority-minority shift, how can we change the narrative around the demographic phenomenon to reduce the psychological threat that they experience? (Q2) Considering the way that people think about diversity—demographic and cultural—what type of diversity ideology will best serve the U.S. in navigating the future and the ever-changing demographic and cultural landscape? (Q3) For what population(s) might the narrative surrounding the majority-minority shift induce a sense of threat, regardless of framing? The present research will investigate answers to the first two questions posed above by using two existing theories. Specifically, the theories of cultural inertia (Quezada, Shaw, & Zarate, 2012; Zarate, Shaw, Marquez, and Biagas, 2012) and polyculturalism (Rosenthal & Levy, 2010; 2012; 2013), described in detail below, may offer a means to decrease the unintended consequences of the majority-minority-shift narrative. The former concept, cultural inertia, offers a framework that can be adopted to change the majority-minority-shift narrative to a less threatening narrative (Q1) and the latter concept, polyculturalism, is an ideology that is associated with higher levels of tolerance for diversity and lower levels of racial and ethnic intolerance or prejudice (Q2). The present research will also investigate the relation between cultural inertia and polyculturalism. Although this relation has yet to be investigated, there is evidence to suggest that the benefits offered by them are linked. To investigate the third question (Q3), the present research will make use of two particular individual differences, national nostalgia (Smeekes, 2015; Smeekes, Verkuyten, & Martinovic, 2015) and national collective narcissism (de Zavala, Cichocka, & Bilewicz, 2013; de Zavala, Cichocka, Eidelson, & Jayawickreme, 2009). I further elaborate on the questions posed above and how I will use the theories described here to answer those questions.

This is a preregistration of the thesis: Aguilera, Rafael. (2022). White Americans’ impending doom? How changing the narrative surrounding the majority-minority shift can attenuate perceived threat among White Americans and reduce hostility and negative affect toward minority outgroups. Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/241289.