Abstract
As a function of their race, gender, class, and other social categories, long-standing privileges in social hierarchies have been afforded to some groups of people to the detriment of others. Recently, scholars have made considerable headway studying the social gains made by disadvantaged groups, including a better understanding of how relatively advantaged groups (e.g., White people; men) often pushback against and resist shifts in group-based power or prestige. The present body of work curates social psychological perspectives on the sense of privilege lost, the belief that one’s dominant group is losing ground to other groups. Here, we outline several dominant themes emerging from scholars in this field, including a better understanding of the psychological nature of group-based threat reactions, and for whom such demographic/power changes are deemed troubling, thus triggering pushback. We make recommendations for shaping future research on the perceived loss of group status and power.
In the popular culture of the ‘40s and ‘50s, white men were role models. They were the detectives and cops who ran down gangsters and the heroes who won World War II on the battlefields of Europe and in the islands of the Pacific . . . They were the Founding Fathers . . . Middle-class white males were the great inventors . . . They were the great capitalists . . . All the great captains of America’s wars were white males . . . The world has been turned upside-down for white children. In our schools the history books have been rewritten and old heroes blotted out, as their statues are taken down and their flags are put away.
The pain and longing expressed in this passage by Pat Buchanan is palpable. A prominent Republican who served as senior advisor, confidant, assistant, and White House Communications Director to Republican presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, Mr. Buchanan has continued to play a central role in right-wing politics in the United States. In addition to expressed pain, he goes on to communicate frustration and outrage, arguing that “[i]n Hollywood films and TV shows, working-class white males are regularly portrayed as what was once disparaged as ‘white trash’” (Buchanan, 2016). Evident in such narratives is the notion of privilege lost, that (predominantly) White men historically held cultural primacy across domains but have been pulled down from their perch to advance the interests of those lower in the hierarchy. But the argument is not simply that their status has lowered, or even made equivalent to that of Black and Hispanic people or women. Rather, in Buchanan’s words, White men are now deemed “the only Americans against whom it is not only permissible, but commendable, to discriminate” (Buchanan, 2016). From this perspective, the cultural pyramid has supposedly been inverted, with White people, and especially White men, emerging as the true losers and victims.
Equally evident is a rather visceral pining for the “good old days,” also captured in the campaign slogan “Make America Great Again,” used successfully by both Presidents Reagan and Trump. To be clear, this sentiment is not solely ideological or political in nature. According to a 2020 Pew survey, although White adults on the right are more likely to react to the decline of the White population in the US as being bad or negative (36% and 40% for Republicans and conservatives, respectively) relative to those on the left (12% and 5% for Democrats and liberals, respectively), almost two thirds of the country view it as neither good nor bad (Krogstad et al., 2020). Although some of this reaction might reflect apathy, it is fair to speculate that much of America seems unsure or uncertain about its shifting racial demographics, nervously watching to learn where demographic trends are heading and their implications.
Undeniably, racial demographics in countries such as the US have changed considerably, and rapidly, in recent years. The 2020 U.S. Census, for instance, reported the first ever decline in the non-Hispanic White population, with the number now sitting below 60% of the population (Levene, 2021). Specifically, in the decade spanning 2010 and 2020, the White population declined by 8.6%, while Black, Hispanic/Latino, and Asian populations rose by 5.6%, 23%, and 35%, respectively. These shifting patterns are amplified in specific regions. Consider Texas, where Black, Hispanic, and Asian groups accounted for a staggering 95% of population growth during this same decade, with Hispanics and Whites evenly represented, as each group composes approximately 39% of the population (Ura et al., 2021).
In colonial nations such as the US, where largely White populations displaced or decimated indigenous populations, the fear of such displacement (or group position downgrading) of one’s own group has presumably loomed large in the public consciousness. Historically, White Americans similarly feared the emancipation of Black people and their attainment of voting rights, given that balances of power and cultural primacy are tenuous and can shift meaningfully. (Of course, men across the world also worried about, and largely resisted, voting rights being granted to women.) Currently observed anxieties and uncertainties around demographic shifts have deep roots. Consider a poster from the 1860s entitled “The Great Fear of the Period That Uncle Sam may be Swallowed by Foreigners: The Problem Solved” (see Figure 1). This image depicts caricatures of an Uncle Sam figure (representing America) being consumed by both Irish and Chinese immigrants, with the Irish character himself subsequently consumed by the Chinese foreigner, who then in turn assumes the Irishman’s identity. The railways portrayed in the background presumably are placed to remind viewers that bringing in workers to build infrastructure can “misfire,” with immigrant workers later consuming the host. Similar sentiment was stoked in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election and captured by the “Build the Wall” chant and slogan (referring to the desire to stop migrants from Mexico and South America from entering and thus altering the U.S. demographic makeup).
The great fear of the period that Uncle Sam may be swallowed by foreigners: The problem solved.
Shifts in power, of course, do not simply represent a numbers game. Power passed from White hands to non-White hands in South Africa not because the latter emerged as numerically greater; the latter remained the numerical majority all along. Instead, a seismic shift in cultural primacy and political power was brought about after decades of hard-fought struggle. Similarly, women do not outnumber men to any meaningful degree but have made considerable gains over the past century (see Banaszak & Ondercin, 2016; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). In most Western countries, one need only go back a century to find a time in which women had no electoral voice, and to go back mere decades for a time when women could not hold their own credit cards or mortgages without a male cosigner. But in countries like the US, women have made significant gains over recent decades, increasing in workforce representation, as breadwinners in families, and even outpacing men in tertiary education (Geiger & Parker, 2018). 1 Nonetheless, women comprise a true numerical minority in the upper echelons of power, making up only about one fifth of the U.S. Congress, and only 8% of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies (Geiger & Parker, 2018; Hinchliffe, 2021).
Overall, therefore, women in many countries have made considerable gains relative to the past but remain very much underpowered, disadvantaged, and with lower cultural primacy relative to men. Indeed, a recent analysis of national monuments in the US reveals not only that many commemorate White male slave owners, but that women are 11 times more likely to be memorialized as mermaids than as congresswomen (Brockell, 2021). Moreover, in New York’s Central Park, women were only represented in statue or sculpture form as fictionalized characters (e.g., Alice in Wonderland), as opposed to depicting real women, up to the year 2020 (McGreevy, 2020). As in the racial domain (see previous lines), however, some in the advantaged group (men) nonetheless feel that men have become the true victims of discrimination (e.g., Zehnter et al., 2021).
What accounts for such reactions by the dominant group to the growing prominence of disadvantaged groups? Some have posited that concerns with group position lie at the heart of the prejudice question, making group position and social hierarchy/order more central or relevant than simple outgroup dislike (e.g., Blumer, 1958; Bobo, 1999; Jackman, 2005). Social psychology has also stressed the importance of relative deprivation, the perception that others are relatively better off than oneself, pertaining to the self (i.e., egoistic deprivation) but also being relevant at the group level (i.e., fraternal deprivation; see Runciman, 1966). This reaction can also involve a temporal element, perceiving things to be less favorable now than in the past. Pettigrew et al. (2008), for instance, found that group-relevant relative deprivation (i.e., our group is doing less well than other groups) is significantly and positively correlated with outgroup prejudice in European samples, although those most prone to relative deprivation feelings are those with lower (vs. higher) status or power. Other research, however, finds the counter-point to also be true: prejudice is also predicted by a sense of entitlement and power among those higher in status, what is known as relative gratification (Dambrun et al., 2006). Thus, both relative deprivation (we are worse off than them; we are worse off than we used to be) and relative gratification (we are better off than them; we are better off than we used to be) are associated with outgroup prejudice, complicating the narrative about intergroup relations being centered on concerns of what others have relative to the self or one’s own group.
More recently, researchers have documented responses to what has become known as racial demographic shift or racial shift information, such as when participants believe or are led to believe that disadvantaged social groups will gain in numbers and come to outnumber the advantaged group (e.g., Craig & Richeson, 2014a, 2014b, 2018a; Outten et al., 2012). The primary paradigm employed by researchers exposes participants to (generally accurate) information about demographic trends, with White people in historically White-dominated countries becoming less than 50% of the total population in a matter of decades (e.g., Craig & Richeson, 2014a; Outten et al., 2012). In control conditions, participants are often exposed to information reflecting demographic stability or information irrelevant to the interracial dynamic under investigation (e.g., control information about an aging population or about growing minority populations in another country). Using such experimental paradigms, Craig and Richeson (2014b) have found that White Americans expressed more conservative ideology and policy preferences, stances which tend to uphold the status quo and counteract redistributing power across racial groups. This effect was explained by elevated perceptions that Whites’ status was under threat in the racial shift (vs. control) condition. Intriguingly, similar effects of racial shift information on political ideology and policy preferences were found among racial minority group members (e.g., Asian Americans and Black Americans) if they learned that another racial minority group (i.e., Hispanic Americans) was gaining in population (see Craig & Richeson, 2018a). This suggests that threat reactions in response to demographic change are not uniquely associated with those in the currently dominant group, but rather that this effect can be present among anyone who perceives an outgroup as growing in population.
In other research, exposure to racial shift (vs. control) information among White Americans generated stronger desires to interact or have contact with other Whites, and generated greater racial prejudice (both implicit and explicit; Craig & Richeson, 2014a). Related research has shown that racial shift information leads dominant groups to express more anger toward and fear of disadvantaged groups, and to express more sympathy for Whites in the future, with the negative emotional reactions statistically explained by a heightened sense of group threat (Outten et al., 2012). Relevant to the theme of this Special Issue, these types of reactions to changing demographics are observed among those who feel that their group position is legitimate (Outten et al., 2018). When privilege is deemed as earned or fair, therefore, dominant group members react emotionally and in a threatened manner to perceived challenges to this privilege, as can be found in this work on responses to demographic shifts.
Moreover, racial shift (vs. control) information has also been shown to make White Americans report that Whites are increasingly the targets of discrimination (Craig & Richeson, 2017, 2018b). However, information alleging that mainstream American culture and American identity will still be dominated by Whites eliminates the perceived rising anti-White discrimination effect, suggesting that these largely symbolic concerns may serve as an underlying psychological root cause.
With the global rise in populism, particularly on the political right (see Olsen, 2021), such research has strong relevance to current world events. “Make American Great Again” has become much more than a mere political slogan, having transformed itself into a call-to-arms to push back against the declining place of White people (and arguably White men) in American society and possibly beyond. Critically, the manipulations used in such studies generally expose people to factual information that demographic change is occurring and that populations are diversifying along racial and/or cultural grounds. Better understanding how those with cultural primacy and privilege react to shifts in group dynamics, population demographics, and power structures has become a pressing concern. In this Special Issue, we have curated cutting-edge research from a pool of scholars who each brings fresh insights to the question of how dominant group members react to a context defined by feeling a sense of privilege lost.
Preview of the Special Issue
The Special Issue pulls together a diverse range of voices on the topic of privilege lost, most regarding racial group position transformation, but many also pertaining to the domain of gender. This reflects the fact that White men hold the bulk of power across civilizations and have done so for hundreds of years (e.g., Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Thus, what is at stake often concerns a loss of “Whiteness” (and specifically White dominance) and/or a loss of male supremacy at the fulcrum of power and influence.
Racial Shifts
In the Special Issue, Brown, Rucker and Richeson (2022) build on earlier work (e.g., Craig & Richeson, 2014), but introduce an important distinction between the perception of change in intergroup position and perceptions of threat associated with that change. Previous research on a related topic found value in differentiating between the perceived population size of an outgroup and the sense of threat associated with that size (see Earle & Hodson, 2019). In keeping with past research, Brown and colleagues exposed White participants to information about Whites becoming a minority in the near future (experimental) or control information (including, in some studies, that made race salient). Across datasets, Brown and colleagues generally found that White respondents exposed to racial shift information (vs. control) showed heightened perceptions of forthcoming racial change, confirming the effectiveness of the manipulation. Although this effect was typically unmoderated by political ideology, meaning that the left and the right equivalently came to perceive a racial shift, the manipulation’s effect on perceived threat was moderated by ideology, but perhaps in a manner that might surprise readers. Those relatively higher in conservatism felt threatened across control and experimental conditions, whereas those lower in conservatism (i.e., higher in liberalism) became less threatened (than in the control group) upon learning of changing demographics. Such findings are consistent with those in the aversive racism literature, where those lower in prejudice-prone tendencies often move in the direction of increased explicit tolerance toward the outgroup (e.g., Hodson et al., 2002; see also Costello & Hodson, 2011). In their analysis, Brown and colleagues note that White America is becoming increasingly polarized over the prospect of growing minority populations.
In samples from Canada, the US, and the UK, Stefaniak and Wohl (2022) experimentally manipulated racial demographic shift (vs. control) to examine support for Black Lives Matter (BLM) and anti-immigrant sentiments. Of particular interest as a potential mediator was the construct of collective angst, “a group-based emotion that reflects concern for the ingroup’s future vitality” (2022). In their larger size samples of White participants, exposure to racial shift information (vs. control) particularly elevated collective angst, along with a weaker but robust elevation of fear (but not anger), particularly among participants who view intergroup relations through a lens of competitive gains coming at the expense of other groups (i.e., zero-sum beliefs). Critically, however, only collective angst (and not the other emotions) predicted decreased support for BLM or heightened anti-immigrant sentiment, helping to isolate the nature of the reaction that racial shift information introduces. This is particularly important given the extent to which variables such as anger are discussed in the popular media as explanations for the rise of Donald Trump and related phenomena (e.g., Lozada, 2017). Group viability concerns, this research suggests, might play a more central role (see also Bai & Federico, 2021).
In contrast to a direct focus on the future (i.e., collective angst), several research groups in the Special Issue explored feelings of nostalgia; these are relevant to the future but are more explicitly focused on a pining for the past. Whereas nostalgia as a personal emotion can have positive implications for the self and ingroup, such as providing inspiration to achieve goals or providing a sense of continuity that is important for well-being, collective nostalgia can have negative implications for outgroups (see Sedikides & Wildschut, 2019). Earle and Hodson (2022) examined the impact of racial diversity on anti-immigrant attitudes and probed the potential role of collective nostalgia. In contrast to much of the past literature that has focused on crowd-sourced samples and manipulations (or self-reports) of diversity, their Study 1 employed a nationally representative sample of White Americans and used changing racial diversity rates from the U.S. Census Bureau to assess objective demographic change at the state level. As expected, greater racial shift locally predicted stronger anti-immigrant sentiments, yet only among those highly identified as White. In an experimental follow-up, White Americans in Study 2 were exposed to information about cultural shift (vs. control) supposedly caused by increased immigration to the participant’s own local region; results indicated that cultural shift information boosted the perception that the future would bear cultural shifts, which predicted greater collective nostalgia (i.e., pining for America’s past), which in turn predicted more negative immigrant attitudes. Consistent with Study 1, however, this pattern was observed only among those more (vs. less) highly identified as White. This conditional effect was largely due to the relation between perceived change and collective nostalgia being significantly stronger among those more (vs. less) White-identified. Such evidence suggests that racial shifts lead to more negative outcomes particularly among those highly racially identified. That is, pushback reactions might not represent the reactions of people generally but rather characterize reactions among a subsection of the population.
In a related vein, Reyna et al. (2022) examined racial nostalgia as a specific form of collective nostalgia that might be particularly relevant to the privilege lost discussion. Operationalized as a “longing for the racial past for Whites,” Reyna and colleagues found, in several cross-sectional datasets with White American participants, that racial nostalgia is associated with constructs such as White identity, opposition to immigrants, and White nationalism. In Study 2, the authors found that racial nostalgia predicted outcomes such as anti-immigrant attitudes in part through realistic and symbolic threats, the sense that immigrants threaten tangible and cultural resources, respectively. Of note, however, these variables did not fully explain this relation, suggesting a potentially important role of additional unexamined variables. In an experimental manipulation making salient America’s racial past (vs. control), White Americans in Study 3 showed heightened racial nostalgia that in turn predicted more anti-immigrant attitudes or realistic/symbolic threats. Thus, pining for the past, such as desiring to “Make America Great Again,” appears to predict outgroup threat perceptions and exclusionary attitudes both cross-sectionally and experimentally.
Rather than focusing on how dominant groups react to racial shift information, Dover (2022) draws attention to strategies that such groups employ to mold conversations about advantaged group positions that serve to maintain the status quo. First, in Study 1, White participants were exposed to advantage frames (stipulating that White people have advantages relative to Black people) or disadvantage frames (stipulating that Black people have disadvantages relative to White people). Advantage frames, relative to disadvantage frames, induced in White undergraduates stronger cardiovascular responses consistent with a threat response. This pattern fits with recent work finding that highlighting the advantages of wealthy people (vs. the disadvantages of poorer people) is less effective at garnering support for reducing economic inequality (Dietze & Craig, 2021). In subsequent studies, Dover then analyses how White Americans use advantage or disadvantage frames in their discourse. Consistent with the aversion to advantage frames found in the initial study, White people demonstrated reluctance to use advantage (vs. disadvantage) framing, particularly when the inequality in question had previously been primed with an illegitimacy (vs. legitimacy) mindset. In keeping with work showing that dominant group members steer conversations away from power when interacting with disadvantaged groups (Saguy et al., 2013), Dover therefore finds that privileged groups engage in subtle strategies to draw attention away from inequality (and presumably to inhibit potential erosions of their hierarchical advantages).
Several other research groups have shifted the discussion in other novel directions, recognizing that group dynamics often reflect more than simple binaries (e.g., White–Black) but instead involve multiple groups simultaneously (see Dixon et al., 2020). In the present volume, Knowles, Tropp and Mogami (2022) addressed the degree to which White Americans, as the dominant racial group, believe that different minority groups collude with each other to bolster their position(s) in the hierarchy. In an ambitious project, the authors examined a nationally representative sample of White Americans over a 3-year period (i.e., longitudinally, across four waves). The results revealed that minority collusion beliefs (and support for White identity politics) had downstream effects that lowered BLM support and boosted support for the Alt-Right movement. Their data also provide insights into differences as a function of political partisanship: White Republicans (vs. Democrats) not only were initially more invested in the notion of minority collusion (and White identity politics) but exhibited greater increases of the former over the course of time. This dynamic approach to viewing intergroup relations, the perception that minority groups not only jockey for more power and greater position but do so in a conspiratorial way, adds considerable nuance to the consideration of privilege lost, recognizing that dominant groups (perhaps especially on the political right) harbor concerns about collaborations that might undermine their dominance.
Craig and Lee (2022) directly tackled the question of how individuals view intergroup relations in diverse hierarchies, particularly in contexts in which a specific group is thought to gain in population, power, and status in a diverse multiracial environment. The authors examined whether considering the gains of a stereotypically lower status group leads members of the socially dominant high-status group to view another high-status group as a likely political ally. In this work, exposing White Americans to information that Hispanic Americans (a stereotypically lower status outgroup) were growing in population size, relative to control information, increased the sense that (a) Hispanics would gain in status, but (b) that both stereotypically higher status groups, Whites and Asian Americans, would lose status from this shift in the power structure (Study 1). Indeed, exposure to similar information that asserted that Hispanic Americans’ social and political status was on the rise led White Americans to anticipate political solidarity between White and Asian Americans with regard to a variety of policies (Studies 2–3). Importantly, perceptions that Asian Americans support the racial status quo appear to be central to these findings. In Study 3, White Americans who were told that Asian Americans held system-justifying attitudes and supported the status quo (see Jost, 2020) responded to Hispanic growth information with stronger expectations of Asian–White solidarity, but this effect was eliminated if participants were told that Asian Americans rejected the current status quo. This suggests that activating concerns about losing social status can enhance Whites’ expectations of political solidarity among stereotypically higher status groups, particularly if the high-status outgroup is thought to support maintaining the status quo. Considered in tandem with the work on minority collusion (Knowles, Tropp and Mogami 2022), the present volume presents clear evidence that perceptions of interracial coalitions are not fixed but sensitive to both partisanship and context (e.g., the salience of a stereotypically lower status group’s gains; see also Craig et al., in press).
However, not all of the articles in the Special Issue have observed sizeable effects of shifting racial status. Stewart and Willer (2022), for instance, examined the degree to which racial shifts might account for the support of Donald Trump and his electoral success in 2016. An earlier paper by Major et al. (2018) had suggested that manipulating racial shift (vs. control) among White people exerted an indirect effect on support for Trump—a candidate whose campaign slogan called out for a return to a (Whiter) America of the past—through elevated status threat. 2 Of note, Major and colleagues found that this effect was qualified, only emerging among those relatively high (not low) in White identification (for comparable results but regarding anti-immigration attitudes, see Earle & Hodson, 2022). Stewart and Willer collected five datasets (one nationally representative) from January to October that year during the run-up to the November 2016 election. Only the January dataset found that racial shift manipulations (vs. control) boosted Trump support; this pattern was not observed for the other months in the run-up to the election. Moreover, the null findings remained null regardless of participants’ level of White identification (a different pattern from Major et al., 2018). Given these findings, we see great promise in a meta-analytic investigation to explore these effects across labs and to provide reliable point estimates of these effects. In doing so, we suggest that time interval to the election be modelled as a variable potentially influencing the effect.
Gender Shifts
Other contributors have seen important value in considering the impact of perceived privilege lost in the domain of gender relations. For instance, Domen, Scheepers, Derks and van Veelen (2022) explored how men, the advantaged gender group, react when women uphold (i.e., legitimize) or upset (i.e., challenge) gender inequity. Of particular value, the researchers drew not only on self-report accounts but also on physiological responses. Participants were exposed to passages indicating that steps were being taken to improve the career prospects of women; the researchers manipulated whether a woman target supported or opposed such changes. As expected, male participants reacted with more negative emotions after being exposed to women who opposed (vs. upheld) gender inequality. In Study 2, the physiological measures revealed that men who highly identify as men showed threat-relevant reactions (where demands exceed resources) toward women challenging the system, but showed challenge-relevant reactions (where resources are surplus to demand) toward women upholding the system. This pattern of strong responses by highly identified dominant group members (men) corresponds to similar patterns in the race domain (e.g., Earle & Hodson, 2022), but here using physiological measures.
In an interesting twist, Rivera-Rodriguez, Larsen and Dasgupta (2022) examined how men react when perceiving that masculinity is decreasing in social value, with the implication being that if masculinity devalued, then men in turn will be devalued. Whereas much of the emphasis on gender relations in the literature focuses on traditional versus untraditional women (and their associated promotion vs. resistance), this research points a lens at the perceived role of traditional or nontraditional men in society. In a correlational dataset, the authors revealed that men who perceive that masculinity is becoming devalued in society are more opposed to feminist social movements, with this effect explained by heightened status threat and realistic (but not symbolic) threat. In a follow-up experiment, Rivera-Rodriguez and colleagues exposed a sample of men to fictitious information that public support for masculinity has been declining over the past 3 decades (or stayed relatively high), with accompanying graphs showing this attitude change or consistency over time. Exposure to the experimental (vs. control) information boosted status threat reactions but did not significantly shift realistic or symbolic threat reactions, nor shift support for feminist movements such as #MeToo. However, there emerged a predicted significant indirect effect: exposure to masculinity decline (vs. control) intensified status threat, which in turn lowered support for feminist movements. Interestingly, there emerged an independent indirect effect through heightened status threat, but only among men high (vs. low) in masculine identity. As with other studies in this Special Issue, individual differences, often those linked to identity, moderated the impact of racial or gender shift information (cf. Stewart & Willer, 2022).
In their work, Lisnek, Wilkins, Wilson and Ekstrom (2022) shone light on a specific domain: sexual assault. In particular, they explored how men can claim victimhood for their group, even in contexts in which the topic is men’s assault of women. In a correlational study, the authors found that perceptions of men’s victimization were more common among conservative (vs. liberal) participants, and among those who feel that women have voice around sexual assault issues. This was the case for both male and female participants. Moreover, the relation between women’s voice and men’s victimization perception was significantly stronger among those higher (vs. lower) in political conservatism. Follow-up studies explored the causal direction of findings. For instance, participants in Study 2 who read about women becoming vocal and openly protesting sexual harassment (vs. control) subsequently showed significantly greater men’s victimization perceptions, an effect not moderated by participant gender. Of note, the effect of the manipulation (i.e., women becoming vocal over sexual harassment) was only significant among those relatively high (not low) in political conservatism. Study 3 exposed participants directly to information that the #MeToo movement victimizes men (vs. control); matching Study 2, only conservative (not liberal) men reacted to the exposed manipulation by becoming less willing to work alone with a woman and less willing to combat sexual assault. There were few significant effects for female participants. Overall, Lisnek and colleagues found that, particularly (or often only) among conservative men, thinking about or being exposed to women’s voice around sexual harassment induces concern about men’s victimization and lowers concern about women’s protection. This phenomenon even affected more subtle measures, such as desiring to not work alone with women. Of note, former Vice-President Mike Pence openly advocated such a practice (Waldman, 2017), a move that can seriously and insidiously impact the career advancement of women. Interestingly, in several of the studies, female participants reacted rather like male participants, suggesting that these processes can be internalized by the victimized groups and/or reflect ideological processes at play.
In their contribution to the Special Issue, Jones et al. (2022) utilized intergroup threat theory to explore gender shifts in vocational contexts. Specifically, they were interested in how men and women react to diversity within typically masculine and feminine job contexts, respectively. Across studies, and employing both cross-sectional and experimental methods, the authors sampled from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students and professionals, nicely capturing the phenomena at different time points of consideration (e.g., future job prospects vs. current job advancement). Overall, they found that men in STEM domains reported a heightened sense of realistic (or material) threat in response to gender diversity efforts, which predicted a range of outcome measures. Women, in contrast, did not generally react to men’s increase in representation in a female-dominated field (nursing) with threat reactions. Promisingly, the researchers found that threat reactions among men could be experimentally reduced. Specifically, if informed that diversity was increasing but that recent technological advances meant that the employment prospects of men would not be compromised by the addition of more women in STEM fields (reducing zero-sum perceptions), pushback against women was mitigated. These studies indicate that men often react to the potential influx of women into male-dominated fields with concerns about their own personal job prospects, which can be mitigated if men are made to feel that the proverbial “pie” of opportunity is getting larger, even if women get larger slices than was historically the case.
Finally, Okuyan and Vollhardt (2022) focused on the potential interaction of hierarchically based constructs, such as social dominance orientation (SDO), with group threats (including status threat and moral image threats) in predicting reactions to both gender and racial shifts in position and privilege. Outside of the domain of racial/gender shifts, past studies have found that SDO is a stronger predictor of antioutgroup bias under experimentally manipulated (e.g., Costello & Hodson, 2011; Unzueta et al., 2014) or measured (Quist & Resendez, 2002) threat relative to control. In several cross-sectional and one experimental study, Okuyan and Vollhardt explored such potential effects with regard to racial/gender shift. Despite finding that variables such as SDO, group threat, and the endorsement of legitimizing myths each predicted greater perceived discrimination against their own dominant group (i.e., White Americans or men), there was little (or mixed) evidence regarding SDO x Threat interactions. In contrast to some of the other papers in the Special Issue (e.g., Domen, Scheepers, Derks and van Veelen 2022; Earle & Hodson, 2022; Knowles, Tropp and Mogami 2022; Stefaniak & Wohl, 2022), but in keeping with others (e.g., Stewart & Willer, 2022), threat effects in this project were not moderated by individual differences.
Special Issue Themes
Moderators of Shift Reactions
An evident theme running throughout the Special Issue is that researchers often test for racial or gender shift threat reactions among a subset of the population—often finding that shift reactions can be moderated by aspects of participants, such as psychological individual differences or demographic characteristics. In this Special Issue, racial (e.g., Earle & Hodson, 2022) or gender (e.g., Domen, Scheepers, Derks and van Veelen 2022; Rivera-Rodriguez, Larsen and Dasgupta 2022) identification played a significant role, with shift effects significantly stronger (or at times only significant) for those highly identified with their (advantaged) group. On the other hand, others found little or mixed evidence of such moderation by identification in racial (e.g., Stewart & Willer, 2022) or gender (e.g., Jones et al., 2022) domains. This collection of studies makes clear that more research on the role of identification is needed to better understand when social identification moderates or not. We suggest that a third, presently unspecified moderator likely impacts the expression of such lower level Shift x Identification interactions; we encourage future researchers to pursue this promising avenue of research.
Other teams in the Special Issue found shift effects to be stronger among those higher in zero-sum beliefs (e.g., Stefaniak & Wohl, 2022) or when such beliefs are manipulated (e.g., Jones et al., 2022); others observed that dynamics framed in terms of dominant group advantage (vs. less dominant group disadvantage) were particularly threatening to the dominant group (see Dover, 2022). With regard to political partisanship and political ideology, researchers also found stronger pushback against privilege being lost among White Republicans and conservatives (vs. White Democrats and liberals; see Knowles, Tropp and Mogami 2022), or found stronger beliefs that men (vs. women) are victims of the #MeToo movement (e.g., Lisnek, Wilkins, Wilson and Ekstrom 2022). Relatedly, Brown, Rucker and Richeson(2022) found that conservatives were consistently threatened and committed to pushing back, regardless of the presentation of racial shift information; instead, the experimental “action” was observed primarily among liberals, who became less psychologically rattled in the shift (vs. control) conditions, seemingly embracing the change in demographics and/or power.
It is worth recalling that nationally representative data reveal that most Americans do not consider changing racial demographics to be either good or bad (Krogstad et al., 2020). Instead, it appears that subsets of the population seem particularly rattled, whereas others welcome the forthcoming demographic or power changes. Efforts to follow up on the themes of the Special Issue will benefit the field at large, further investigating and understanding moderators of such effects, whether they be individual differences (i.e., “for whom” questions) or contextual factors (e.g., “in which regions” or “under what conditions”) questions.
Processes Underlying Shift Reactions
The Special Issue also highlights potential mediators of demographic or power shift effects, providing insights into the mechanisms (or the “why” questions). Understandably, most researchers pursued the notion of threat in its many forms, including status threat, realistic (i.e., tangible) threat (including perceived discrimination against the dominant group), symbolic threat (i.e., nontangible), or moral threat (e.g., Brown, Rucker and Richeson 2022; Domen, Scheepers, Derks and van Veelen 2022; Dover, 2022; Jones et al., 2022; Okuyan & Vollhardt, 2022; Reyna et al., 2022; Rivera-Rodriguez, Larsen and Dasgupta 2022). Most of these endeavors generally found that threats play a significant role in predicting a range of outcomes relevant to solidifying the status quo. Building on past work, the papers in the Special Issue have shed new light on a range of threat-relevant mediators and have made more fine-grained distinctions between constructs (e.g., reference to status change threats by Brown, Rucker and Richeson 2022).
Other authors in the Special Issue have explored threat-relevant mediators that diverge somewhat from a purer “threat” theme, ranging from collective nostalgia (Earle & Hodson, 2022) or racial nostalgia (Reyna et al., 2022) to collective (existential) angst and fear (Stefaniak & Wohl, 2022). Each of these constructs is reflected in current news and politics in the US and around the world, capturing a longing for an idealized past or an agonizing about the viability of one’s own group in the near future. These constructs, in many ways, capture the notion of a loss of privilege, with an eye to what dominant groups once had as opposed to simply what they stand to lose. In their work, Knowles, Tropp and Mogami (2022) used longitudinal data to explore latent growth curve trends that can also shed light on how processes unfold (over time): Whites’ essentialist beliefs of their ingroup predicted beliefs in minority collusion downstream; beliefs in minority collusion lowered support for BLM and elevated support for the Alt-Right downstream.
The work from the Special Issue ties in well with the model outlined by Craig et al. (2018), whereby anticipated or actual increases in diversity predict perceptions of greater minority group size, which in turn heightens threat perceptions (of the sort explored in the Special Issue), which then predict prejudice and discrimination. Their model anticipated cultural moderators of the links between increases in diversity and perceptions of size, and postulated individual difference moderators between group size and perceived threat. As evident in this present volume, many of these factors have now been explored, putting more pieces of the puzzle in place. Collectively, these papers offer fresh insights into the reasons why demographic shift information induces such negative effects, at least among subsets of people, providing valuable information for the development of interventions.
Methodological Developments
We are particularly encouraged to witness the wide range of domains and outcome measures explored in the Special Issue, ranging from basic attitudes (e.g., Earle & Hodson, 2022; Stefaniak & Wohl, 2022) to policy support (e.g., Craig & Lee, 2022; Jones et al., 2022; Okuyan & Vollhardt, 2022) to supporting social movements (e.g., Rivera-Rodriguez, Larsen and Dasgupta 2022; Stefaniak & Wohl, 2022) or political candidates (Stewart & Willer, 2022). We also witness a new interest in predicting the dominant group feeling victimized (e.g., Lisnek, Wilkins, Wilson and Ekstrom 2022). Several of the research groups (e.g., Domen, Scheepers, Derks and van Veelen 2022; Dover, 2022) introduced physiological measures to the exploration of privilege lost, offering new insights and corroborating much of the self-report evidence in the field. Each of these trends is an exciting development for the field. We are also impressed by the breadth of sampling and variation in research design. Although most employed experimental designs using crowd-sourced (e.g., MTurk) or university samples, several included nationally representative data (e.g., Earle & Hodson, 2022; Knowles, Tropp and Mogami 2022; Stewart & Willer, 2022) or stratified panel data (e.g., Okuyan & Vollhardt, 2022), and some utilized multiwave longitudinal research (see Knowles, Tropp and Mogami 2022). Jones et al. (2022) impressively examined pushback in STEM domains not only among students (who would be affected in the future) but among currently working professionals in that domain.
Challenges and Opportunities for Future Directions
This impressive range of methods evidenced in the Special Issue has expanded the boundaries of earlier racial shift paradigms to comprehensively explore reactions to changing demographics and privilege lost concerns. Our enthusiasm is bolstered by the direct efforts to experimentally reduce negative outcomes from demographic shifts (e.g., Jones et al., 2022) and by efforts to explore effects across different nations (see Stefaniak & Wohl, 2022). There remain, of course, challenges for the field, beyond simply the rather salient need to expand beyond the heavy US focus in this line of inquiry. For instance, it appears that some basic racial shift findings from the past (e.g., Major et al., 2018) might not be as easily reproduced in current times (e.g., Stewart & Willer, 2022). Arguably, the political landscape in the US and abroad has altered radically since 2015, meaning that new dynamics might be at play. We also suspect that racial/gender shift manipulations were previously more novel to participants and thus more impactful when employed a decade ago (e.g., Craig & Richeson, 2014a, 2014b; Outten et al., 2012). Since this time, we suspect that racial demographic change of the sort that puts White people in the minority within a generation or two is now common knowledge (or perception), weakening the manipulated introduction of such information to participants. For example, Brown, Rucker and Richeson (2022) revealed that conservatives were relatively unfazed by the introduction of such information across experimental and control conditions. That is, conservatives held beliefs about Whites becoming a minority regardless of the stimuli presented by the experimenters.
Why might this be the case? Right-wing news and social media are replete with discussions of the “browning” and “blackening” of America, which might undermine standard manipulations that have previously been successful. Going forward, instead of manipulating racial/gender shift itself, researchers might move to manipulating other contextual factors (e.g., intergroup anxiety; economic hardships) to explore how beliefs about demographic shift are modulated in their effects on prejudice, discrimination, or ideological stances. We encourage researchers to also study the dynamic nature of privilege shifts. For instance, panel data from a YouGOV poll of over 5,000 Americans during the 2016 presidential election found “direct evidence that Trump’s campaign benefited from and catalyzed racial divisions” (Enns & Jardina, 2021). Our point is that people do not merely react to shifting power dynamics, but that political operatives also foment real or perceived conflict in order to shape such reactions for political and other gains.
Another opportunity for future researchers concerns the contemplation of intersectional privilege. As noted in our introduction, White men clearly hold more privilege relative to other groups and thus have the most “to lose” (and thus react with strong pushback). Although the articles in the Special Issue explored race and gender relatively separately, they did not explore the intersection of race and gender directly. An intersectional lens also opens opportunities for those interested in the concept of intergroup collusion and coalition (e.g., Craig & Lee, 2022; Knowles, Tropp and Mogami 2022), with groups sharing some social categories but not sharing others, factors which might change over time or with contextual salience.
We recognize the opportunities but also the future challenges for this field of inquiry, including how to discuss “privilege” itself. In the latest incarnation of the so-called “culture wars” in America, many voices on the political right seek to limit discourse around systemic prejudice and discrimination, often taking the form of a pushback against the teaching of critical race theory (Crenshaw, 1996) in classrooms (Kendi, 2021). Or consider how a sitting British Conservative MP has recently argued that the term “White privilege” should be regarded as a form of extremism that should be reported to antiterrorism agencies (Taylor, 2021). Such actions, if implemented, could serve to silence the study of privilege. Such overreactions also risk altering the nature of the privilege construct itself, losing or obscuring its meaning (which may actually be the point of the objections). Although psychology is well positioned to tackle such issues, it also risks being caught in the very cultural wars that it seeks to study (see Hodson, 2021).
“When You’re Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression” 3
Closing Remarks
The morning after the 2012 reelection of Barack Obama, the first Black President of the United States, conservative talk-show pundit Rush Limbaugh openly expressed lament for what one can reasonably assert is the wail of White privilege being lost: I went to bed last night thinking we’re outnumbered. I went to bed last night thinking all this discussion we’d had about this election being the election that will tell us whether or not we’ve lost the country. I went to bed last night thinking we’ve lost the country. I don’t know how else you look at this. (Edsall, 2012)
Such feelings of loss do not reflect simple nostalgia, particularly considered in the context of claims that White people and men are the new victims and underdogs. Importantly, there is actually little evidence that decreases in discrimination against Black people have produced an uptick in discrimination against White people (see Earle & Hodson, 2020). Despite gains by women and other disadvantaged groups, White male dominance remains well entrenched across multiple social and economic indicators. Relinquishing even small amounts of power and prestige seemingly generates a subjective sense of loss and an inversion of power that is largely unmoored to objective power dynamics.
As we close out the first two decades of the 21st century, this Special Issue is released at an interesting, if not pivotal, time in history. Many of the previous assumptions and beliefs about who holds power, and who is entitled to rights, have largely been held as unquestioned truisms but now are clearly open for discussion and renegotiation. History teaches us that those with power and cultural primacy rarely relinquish power willingly or gracefully but rather engage in pushback and backlash against those standing to better their position in the social hierarchy. We hope that the research curated in this volume will serve as a springboard for those wishing to better understand the sense of privilege lost, and also for those seeking to develop interventions to mitigate intergroup tension, hostility, and conflict.
