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  • 2022
  • Working Paper
  • HBS Working Paper Series

Hate Crime Increases with Minoritized Group Rank

By: Marco E. Tabellini
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:70
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Abstract

People are on the move in unprecedented numbers within and between countries. How does demographic change affect local intergroup dynamics? In complement to accounts that emphasize stereotypical features of groups as determinants of their treatment, we propose the group reference dependence hypothesis: violence and negative attitudes toward each minoritized group will depend on the number and size of other minoritized groups in a community. Specifically, as groups increase or decrease in rank in terms of their size (e.g., to largest minority within a community), discriminatory behavior and attitudes toward them should change accordingly. We test this hypothesis for hate crimes in U.S. counties between 1990 and 2010 and attitudes in the U.S. and U.K. over the last two decades. Consistent with this prediction, we find that, as Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian, and Arab populations increase in rank relative to one another, they become more likely to be targeted with hate crimes and more negative attitudes. The rank effect holds above and beyond group size/proportion, growth rate, and many other alternative explanations. This framework makes novel predictions about how demographic shifts may affect coalitional structures in the coming years and helps explain previous findings in the literature. Our results also indicate that attitudes and behaviors toward social categories are not intransigent or driven only by features associated with those groups, such as stereotypes.

Keywords

Prejudice; Minority; Hate Crimes; Reference Dependence; Demographics; Rank and Position; Prejudice and Bias; Crime and Corruption

Citation

Cikara, Mina, Vasiliki Fouka, and Marco Tabellini. "Hate Crime Increases with Minoritized Group Rank." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-075, February 2022. (Permanent link here. Forthcoming at Nature Human Behaviour.)
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About The Author

Marco E. Tabellini

Business, Government and the International Economy
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Related Work

    • November 2022
    • Nature Human Behaviour

    Hate Crime Towards Minoritized Groups Increases as They Increase in Sized-Based Rank

    By: Mina Cikara, Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini
Related Work
  • Hate Crime Towards Minoritized Groups Increases as They Increase in Sized-Based Rank By: Mina Cikara, Vasiliki Fouka and Marco Tabellini
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