Imitative Behavior as a Function of Success-Failure and Racial-Socioeconomic Factors1

This study examined whether success-failure experiences, race, and social class are related to the likelihood that young children will engage in imitative behavior. Black subjects imitated significantly more than white subjects on a pre-experimental measure of imitation. Analysis of a difference score between pre- and post-experimental measures of imitation indicated that prior success was associated with less imitation than failure or a neutral condition. In addition, a white model was imitated significantly more than a black model in both the failure and the success conditions, with little difference between models in the neutral condition. No significant difference was found between the nondeprived and deprived groups. The results were discussed in terms of an outer-directedness hypothesis.     

Racialized Religion and Judicial Injustice: How Whiteness and Biblicist Christianity Intersect to Promote a Preference for (Unjust) Punishment

America's judicial system is both exceptionally punitive and demonstrably unjust toward racial minorities. While these dual realities are structured into America's institutions, we propose they are also partially sustained by the intersection of ideologies that are both racialized and sacralized. Using multiple waves of the General Social Surveys and a unique measure that asks Americans to choose between two forms of judicial injustice (wrongful conviction or erroneous acquittal), we examine how white racial identity intersects with biblical literalism to bolster America's bent toward unjust punitiveness. In the main effects, Americans who affirm biblical literalism are more likely to show a preference for convicting the innocent, as are whites compared to Black Americans. Examining interaction effects, however, we find whiteness moderates the influence of biblical literalism such that only white biblical literalists (as opposed to non‐white biblical literalists or white non‐biblical literalists) are more likely to prefer wrongful conviction. Indeed, in our full model, being a white biblical literalist is the strongest predictor of preferring wrongful conviction. We theorize that preference for wrongful conviction over erroneous acquittal stems, at least in part, from the combination of sacralized authoritarianism and perceived racial threat.