Measuring Racial Prejudice in a Multiracial World: New Methods and New Constructs

This chapter argues for the use of new methods to assess racial prejudice because existing methods only provide a piecemeal understanding of the phenomenon, leading to an under-assessment of key constructs (e.g., ingroup favoritism, outgroup derogation) and provide no precision to assess new constructs, such as generalized outgroup derogation (negativity directed at all outgroups equally) and selective outgroup derogation (negativity directed at a specific outgroup or specific outgroups). The use of new response options, multiple targets, and multiple perceivers integrated into a single instrument is encouraged. The multidimensional architecture of the proposed instrument will allow researchers to uncover new constructs (e.g., selective or generalized outgroup derogation) and improve the assessment of existing constructs (e.g., ingroup favoritism, outgroup derogation) associated with racial prejudice. This chapter concludes by arguing that the methodological and theoretical clarity offered by these new methods in a single instrument will supplement and advance our understanding of racial prejudice, and that the approach is equally applicable to both the child and adult literatures.