Attitudes Toward Blacks (ATB)

Abstract

The Attitudes Toward Blacks (ATB) scale, developed by Brigham in 1993, is a widely cited psychometric instrument used primarily in social psychology research to gauge explicit racial attitudes towards Black individuals. This 20-item scale assesses various facets of racial sentiment, moving beyond simple prejudice measures to include dimensions such as willingness for social distance, affective responses, opinions on governmental policy regarding race relations, and concerns related to reverse discrimination. It utilizes a standard Likert scale format ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” to capture a range of agreement or disagreement with specific statements concerning integration and equality.

Keywords

Racial attitudes, explicit prejudice, social distance, reverse discrimination, race relations, attitude measurement, social psychology, Brigham.

Authors

John C. Brigham

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Attitudes Toward Blacks (ATB) scale is to provide a reliable and comprehensive measure of college students’ racial attitudes toward Black people, particularly within the context of American race relations in the late 20th century. Developed during a period of shifting social norms, the instrument was designed to capture the complexity of modern racial sentiment, which often involves nuanced forms of prejudice rather than overt hostility.

The scale aims to differentiate between various components of racial attitudes, allowing researchers to explore how personal feelings (affective reactions), behavioral intentions (social distance), and political beliefs (governmental policy) interact to form overall racial perspectives. It is a critical tool for tracking changes in racial attitudes over time within academic populations and for use in intervention studies designed to reduce prejudice.

Construct

The ATB scale is a multidimensional construct measurement tool focusing on explicit racial attitudes. It operationalizes attitudes across four key domains identified in the source content: social distance, affective reactions, governmental policy, and worry about reverse discrimination. These domains reflect the cognitive, affective, and behavioral components typically associated with prejudice measurement in social psychology research.

Items related to social distance measure the respondent’s comfort level with close personal interactions (e.g., neighbors, roommates, dancing). Items related to governmental policy assess support for or opposition to federal intervention aimed at promoting equality and integration. The inclusion of items concerning reverse discrimination captures anxieties among majority group members regarding perceived losses of privilege or opportunity due to minority advancement policies, reflecting a key dimension of modern racial resentment.

Validity

While specific detailed validity coefficients are not provided in the summarized source material, the comprehensive structure of the ATB scale suggests strong content validity. The items were carefully constructed by Brigham (1993) to cover a wide range of social, personal, and political scenarios relevant to Black-White race relations, ensuring that the scale adequately represents the breadth of the domain of racial attitudes.

The scale’s frequent use and high citation rate in subsequent academic literature focusing on prejudice and racial attitudes serve as evidence of its established external and construct validity within the field. Researchers commonly employ the ATB as a benchmark measure, suggesting confidence in its ability to accurately reflect the underlying multidimensional construct.

Reliability

The Attitudes Toward Blacks (ATB) scale demonstrates strong internal consistency, indicating that its 20 items reliably measure the same underlying construct. The reliability is quantified using the widely accepted measure, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, which was reported in the source material as 0.82. This value exceeds the generally accepted standard threshold of 0.70 for psychological scales, confirming the instrument’s high reliability for research purposes.

This strong internal consistency suggests that the scale items are homogeneous and highly correlated, making the overall score a trustworthy representation of the respondent’s general attitudes toward Black individuals. Subsequent studies utilizing the ATB scale have generally replicated this strong reliability across diverse samples of college students and young adults.

Factor Analysis

Although the raw source content lists the underlying dimensions, it does not explicitly detail the statistical results of the factor analysis conducted by Brigham (1993). However, the identification of four distinct sub-constructs—social distance, affective reactions, governmental policy, and worry about reverse discrimination—implies that a robust factor analytic procedure was utilized to validate the scale’s intended multi-dimensional structure.

The separation of the ATB score into these four factors allows researchers to conduct sophisticated analyses, distinguishing, for instance, between individuals who hold egalitarian beliefs about equality but still exhibit high social distance, versus those whose primary resistance stems from opposition to government intervention.

Instrument

Test Type: Psychometric Self-Report Scale

Format: The ATB uses a Likert scale response format, typically ranging from a minimum category (e.g., strongly disagree) to a maximum category (e.g., strongly agree). The complete instrument comprises 20 items, including both positively and negatively worded statements to control for response biases.

Language Available: English (Original)

Population Group: General population, primarily used with majority group members for measuring explicit prejudice.

Age Group: Adolescents and Adults (typically college students, 18+).

Population Details: Originally validated on samples of college students, reflecting the context of Brigham’s 1993 study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

Test Methodology: Standard administration of the 20-item questionnaire, either via paper-and-pencil or electronically. Scoring involves summing or averaging responses across items, often with subscale scores calculated for the four primary dimensions.

Keywords

Racial measurement, prejudice scale, Cronbach’s alpha, social acceptance, racial integration, Brigham 1993, social beliefs.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source material.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not provided in source material.

Correspondence Address: Not provided in source material.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The instrument was first published in 1993 by J. C. Brigham. The scale is frequently utilized in academic research, and the full instrument is often made available for non-commercial research purposes through academic databases or by citing the original publication in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

The original PDF containing the instrument items and context can be downloaded here: https://shareok.org/bitstream/handle/11244/6988/Department%20of%20Psychology_66.pdf?sequence=1

Reference’s

• Brigham, J. C. (1993). College students’ racial attitudes. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 23, 1933-1967.
• Wisdom, Nicholas M. (2010). social acceptance of age discrimination. Oklahoma State University. Doctoral dissertation.

Items of the Attitudes Toward Blacks (ATB)

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

1. If a black were put in charge of me, I would not mind taking advice and direction from him or her.
2. If I had a chance to introduce black visitors to my friends and neighbors, I would be pleased to do so.
3. I would rather not have blacks live in the same apartment building I live in.
4. I would probably feel somewhat self-conscious dancing with a black in a public place.
5. I would not mind it at all if a black family with about the same income and education as me moved in next door.
6. I think that black people look more similar to each other than white people do.
7. Interracial marriage should be discouraged to avoid the “who-am-I?” confusion which the children feel.
8. I get very upset when I hear a white make a prejudicial remark about blacks.
9. I favor open housing laws that allow more racial integration of neighborhoods.
10. It would not bother me if my new roommate was black.
11. It is likely that blacks will bring violence to neighborhoods when they move in.
12. I enjoy a funny racial joke, even if some people might find it offensive.
13. The federal government should take decisive steps to override the injustices blacks suffer at the hands of local authorities.
14. Black and white people are inherently equal.
15. Black people are demanding too much too fast in their push for equal rights.
16. Whites should support blacks in their struggle against discrimination and segregation.
17. Generally, blacks are not as smart as whites.
18. I worry that in the next few years I may be denied my application for a job or a promotion because of preferential treatment given to minority group members.
19. Racial integration (of schools, businesses, residences, etc.) has benefitted both whites and blacks.
20. Some blacks are so touchy about race that it is difficult to get along with them.