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Political Behavior

, Volume 36, Issue 3, pp 493–514 | Cite as

The Public’s Anger: White Racial Attitudes and Opinions Toward Health Care Reform

  • Antoine J. Banks
Original Paper
First Online:

Abstract

Pundits and politicians debated whether race was implicated in the rancorous public forums and demonstrations over health care reform. Research suggests that for many white Americans, racial predispositions play a greater role in their opinions on health care than non-racial predispositions. Building on this work, I examine the extent to which anger uniquely activates white racial attitudes and increases their effect on preferences for health care reform. My theory suggests this effect occurs because anger and thoughts about race are tightly linked in memory. Using a nationally representative experiment over two waves, I induced several emotions to elicit anger, fear, enthusiasm, or relaxation. The results show that anger uniquely pushes racial conservatives to be more opposing of health care reform while it triggers more support among racial liberals. On the other hand, anger does not enhance the effect of race-neutral principles on health care reform.

Keywords

Racism Emotions Health care reform Public opinion 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Sanata Sy-Sahande and Kerry Jones for excellent research assistance, and Daniel Biggers, Christina Greer, Eric Groenendyk, Michael Hanmer, Vincent Hutchings, Karen Kaufmann, Eric McDaniel, and Nicholas Valentino, as well as attendees of the American Politics Workshop at Georgetown University for helpful feedback. Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences collected the data.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Government and PoliticsUniversity of MarylandCollege ParkUSA

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