Michigan State University Extension
Diversity and Pluralism - 02120028
12/95/
ERIC TITLE NUMBER: ED342308 AUTHOR: Nacoste, Rupert Barnes; And Others
TITLE: Affirmative Action and the Formation of Informal
Interracial Groups on the College Campus: Report to the
Spencer Foundation. Reporting Period: August, 1990-July
1991.
YEAR PUBLISHED: (1991)
NOTE: 19 p.
ABSTRACT: This paper reports on a study designed to
investigate how white college students' naive beliefs about
affirmative action admission policies might negatively
influence the likelihood of their interacting with their
black student peers. It was noted that many institutions
are not open about exactly how their affirmative action
admissions policies work with the consequence that white
students do not understand and make incorrect assumptions
about how affirmative action students were admitted. Using
a program of experimental research for testing variants of
the social distance hypothesis, two studies were carried
out. The first study measured white students' beliefs about
student racial ambivalence and found that students who
believed that affirmative action students were
underqualified showed reluctance to associate with black
students. In the second experiment students were organized
by levels of racial ambivalence and by beliefs about
beneficiaries' qualifications with results showing that
white students chose to associate with black students more
if they believed that they were qualified. Overall, the
findings indicated that the formation of informal groups
was influenced by procedure-based beliefs about the extent
to which affirmative action leads to the selection of
qualified or unqualified black students. Included are 4
tables and 29 references. (JB)
KEY DESCRIPTORS: Admission-Criteria; College-Admission;
College-Desegregation; College-Students; Higher-Education;
Interpersonal-Relationship; Opinions-; Qualifications-;
Racial-Bias; Social-Influences; Whites-
KEY DESCRIPTORS: *Affirmative-Action; *Black-Youth; *Social
Behavior; *Student-Attitudes
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