Title:

Scientific supremacy: How do genetic narratives relate to racism and racist ideology?

Abstract:

Recent research suggests that contemporary American society is marked by heightened hostile racial rhetoric—alongside the increasing salience of white nationalists who justify an ideology of racial hierarchy with claims of biological superiority. This social and political environment is coupled with a media environment that routinely reports scientific studies linking biology with social outcomes—such as investigations of the genetic bases of racial differences. Across three experimental studies, I examine how scientific narratives that link genes with health and behavioral outcomes can impact racism. The results suggest that in a racialized context, deterministic genetic attributions for intergroup differences in health and behavior can lead to more racist attitudes. Importantly, however, these studies also suggest that more contextualized genetic attributions (e.g., emphasizing interactions between multiple genes or between genes and the environment) can buffer negative racial attitude effects. A fourth experiment explores how ideological support for the alt-right moderates the effects of genetic attributions on essentialist biases, providing insight into how genetic narratives may provide a cognitive gateway into scientific racism. This research holds implications for understanding the nature of racial attitudes and racialized ideology in contemporary American society, as well as for framing scientific communication in intergroup contexts.