Attitudes Toward Blacks (ATB)

Abstract

The Attitudes Toward Blacks (ATB) scale, developed by social psychologist John C. Brigham in 1993, is an established 20-item self-report psychometric instrument designed to assess explicit racial attitudes held by White individuals toward African Americans. Developed in response to the recognized shift from blatant, legally sanctioned racial animus toward more subtle, systemic, and multi-faceted expressions of intergroup bias, the ATB captures both interpersonal social distance and sociopolitical attitudes. The scale encompasses four primary experiential and evaluative domains: interpersonal social distance, affective reactions to racial situations, attitudes toward governmental civil rights policies, and apprehensions regarding reverse discrimination and perceived racial threat. Measured primarily on a Likert-type response format anchored from strongly disagree to strongly agree, the ATB yields either an overall composite racial attitude score or multidimensional subscale indices.

Psychometric evaluations across multiple undergraduate and adult community cohorts consistently demonstrate high internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients regularly falling between .82 and .88, alongside robust test-retest stability over multi-week intervals. Construct, convergent, and discriminant validities have been empirically supported via significant correlations with concurrent measures of racial prejudice—such as the Modern Racism Scale (MRS), the Symbolic Racism 2000 Scale (SR2K), and the Bogardus Social Distance Scale—while maintaining conceptual distinction from generalized social desirability and political conservatism. Furthermore, the ATB demonstrates pronounced predictive utility in behavioral experiments, forecasting nonverbal behaviors in interracial interactions, interpersonal seating distances, evaluative judgments in resume screening, and judicial decision-making simulations. As contemporary society continues to grapple with pervasive racial disparities, systemic bias, and shifting norms around equity, diversity, and inclusion, the ATB remains a foundational psychometric standard for social psychologists, sociologists, and behavioral researchers investigating explicit prejudice.

Keywords

Attitudes Toward Blacks, ATB scale, John C. Brigham, racial prejudice, social distance, explicit prejudice, intergroup relations, modern racism, racial integration, reverse discrimination, psychometrics, scale validation, affective prejudice.

Authors

The Attitudes Toward Blacks (ATB) scale was conceived, developed, and empirically validated by John C. Brigham, Ph.D. (1942–2014), who served for over three decades as a Professor of Psychology at Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee, Florida. Dr. Brigham was a distinguished social psychologist internationally recognized for his pioneering empirical contributions to two interconnected fields: the assessment of racial stereotypes, racial attitudes, and intergroup perceptions, and the cognitive-social dynamics of eyewitness identification, specifically the cross-race effect (own-race bias in facial recognition).

Dr. Brigham earned his doctorate in social psychology from the University of Colorado Boulder under the mentorship of Stuart W. Cook, a preeminent figure in intergroup contact theory and racial attitude assessment who co-developed the Multifactor Racial Attitude Inventory (MRAI). Building on Cook’s psychometric traditions, Brigham dedicated much of his academic career to refining the conceptualization and measurement of ethnic attitudes, stereotypic attributions, and legal psychology. During his tenure at Florida State University, Brigham served as President of the American Psychology-Law Society (AP-LS; Division 41 of the American Psychological Association) and authored foundational textbooks and monographs on social psychology and applied social research.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Attitudes Toward Blacks (ATB) scale is to provide a psychometrically sound, multi-faceted measure of explicit evaluative attitudes toward African Americans. In the late 20th century, social psychologists recognized that older measurement instruments—such as early social distance metrics or post-World War II explicit scales—were increasingly burdened by ceiling and floor effects, anachronistic wording, and vulnerability to changing norms of public discourse. Blatant, old-fashioned “Jim Crow” racism (premised on explicit beliefs in genetic inferiority and formal legal segregation) was increasingly supplanted by more nuanced, symbolic, and structural manifestations of bias. Brigham recognized that existing modern racism scales frequently conflated racial prejudice with broad political ideology, fiscal conservatism, and anti-welfare stances. Thus, the ATB was engineered to directly assess interpersonal comfort, affective reactions, willingness for personal contact, and perceived threats to self-interest without relying solely on conservative political tenets.

In research contexts, the ATB serves multiple functions. It provides a standardized baseline for experimental social psychology studies examining intergroup contact, implicit-explicit attitude dissociations (such as comparisons with the Implicit Association Test), stereotyping priming paradigms, and cross-racial facial recognition studies. In applied and institutional settings, the scale provides administrators, sociologists, and diversity officers with an empirically validated diagnostic instrument to evaluate the racial climate of university campuses, corporate workplaces, and public organizations. By assessing willingness for residential integration, rooming with minority peers, or working under minority supervision, the ATB can pinpoint specific interpersonal barriers to institutional integration.

In educational, legal, and counseling psychology contexts, the instrument is frequently employed in cross-cultural competence research to track attitude shifts following multicultural training, diversity interventions, or experiential service-learning courses. Furthermore, within forensic psychology and jury selection research, the ATB offers a reliable methodology to examine how racial attitudes correlate with jury verdicts, capital sentencing recommendations, and credibility evaluations of minority defendants and witnesses.

Psychological Construct

The Attitudes Toward Blacks (ATB) scale measures a multi-component psychological construct centered on explicit racial attitudes. Within contemporary social psychology, an attitude is conceptualized as an enduring psychological tendency expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor. Intergroup racial attitudes incorporate cognitive beliefs (stereotypes and attributions), affective reactions (emotional responses of discomfort, empathy, or antipathy), and behavioral intentions (willingness to interact, maintain social distance, or support equitable policies). Brigham formulated the ATB to address four core sub-constructs:

1. Social Distance and Interpersonal Proximity

Rooted in the theoretical traditions of Emory S. Bogardus, social distance refers to the grades and degrees of understanding and intimacy that characterize pre-social and social relations between groups. In the ATB, this dimension assesses the respondent’s subjective comfort with varying degrees of interpersonal intimacy with Black individuals. Key indicators assess comfort in residential proximity (Item 3: “I would rather not have blacks live in the same apartment building I live in”; Item 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”), intimate peer living situations (Item 10: “It would not bother me if my new roommate was black”), social introduction to existing peer networks (Item 2), and public interpersonal activities (Item 4: “I would probably feel somewhat self-conscious dancing with a black in a public place”). High prejudice on this dimension reflects a psychological need to maintain spatial, physical, and relational boundaries between racial groups.

2. Affective Reactions and Interpersonal Discomfort

Prejudice is fundamentally an affective construct, characterized by feelings of anxiety, unease, aversion, or emotional empathy when encountering outgroup members or outgroup-relevant events. The ATB measures affective reactions through items capturing empathy toward racial injustice (Item 8: “I get very upset when I hear a white make a prejudicial remark about blacks”), tolerance of derogatory humor (Item 12: “I enjoy a funny racial joke, even if some people might find it offensive”), and emotional irritation regarding racial discussions (Item 20: “Some blacks are so touchy about race that it is difficult to get along with them”). Individuals who exhibit high scores on these affective items frequently experience heightened intergroup anxiety, low racial empathy, and resentment when confronted with the realities of racial discrimination.

3. Governmental Policy and Societal Equity Support

This dimension assesses attitudes toward systemic, legislative, and institutional interventions designed to remedy historical discrimination and protect equal opportunity. Unlike general ideological conservativism, this construct isolates racial policy support. Items evaluate backing for federal legal intervention against local injustice (Item 13: “The federal government should take decisive steps to override the injustices blacks suffer at the hands of local authorities”), residential desegregation laws (Item 9: “I favor open housing laws that allow more racial integration of neighborhoods”), collaborative allyship (Item 16: “Whites should support blacks in their struggle against discrimination and segregation”), and overall evaluations of the societal benefits of structural integration (Item 19: “Racial integration (of schools, businesses, residences, etc.) has benefitted both whites and blacks”).

4. Worry About Reverse Discrimination and Perceived Threat

Drawing directly from realistic conflict theory and symbolic racism frameworks, this dimension captures zero-sum thinking, racial resentment, and feelings of vulnerability among White individuals regarding affirmative action and perceived minority advancement. It is operationalized through items measuring direct vocational anxiety (Item 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”), perceptions of pace and entitlement in the civil rights movement (Item 15: “Black people are demanding too much too fast in their push for equal rights”), and persistent stereotypes regarding neighborhood safety and criminality (Item 11: “It is likely that blacks will bring violence to neighborhoods when they move in”). Individuals scoring high on this dimension view Black socio-economic progress as a direct zero-sum threat to White privilege and personal career stability.

Theoretical Framework

The ATB scale is grounded in several interrelated psychological and sociological theories developed throughout the 20th century to explain racial prejudice, stereotyping, and intergroup hostility.

Allport’s Nature of Prejudice and the Contact Hypothesis

The intellectual foundation of Brigham’s scale draws heavily from Gordon Allport’s seminal work, The Nature of Prejudice (1954). Allport defined prejudice as an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization, directed toward a group as a whole or toward an individual because they are a member of that group. Allport postulated that prejudice is expressed along an escalating continuum: antilocution (verbal derogatory remarks), avoidance (maintaining social distance), discrimination (exclusion from housing, employment, and civil rights), physical attack, and extermination.

Brigham explicitly incorporated Allport’s continuum by sampling items across the lower and intermediate stages of prejudice expression—from tolerance of derogatory jokes (antilocution) to residential exclusion (avoidance) and resistance to equal opportunity policy (discrimination). Furthermore, Allport’s Intergroup Contact Hypothesis asserts that positive intergroup attitudes develop under specific contact conditions: equal status between groups, common goals, intergroup cooperation, and the support of authorities, law, or custom. ATB items assessing willingness to accept a Black supervisor (Item 1) or live next door to a Black family of equal income and education (Item 5) directly operationalize Allport’s equal-status contact parameters.

Symbolic, Modern, and Aversive Racism Theories

During the 1970s and 1980s, social theorists including David O. Sears, Donald R. Kinder, and John B. McConahay demonstrated that overt, bio-genetic assertions of White superiority were increasingly being replaced by symbolic racism and modern racism. These frameworks contend that modern racial prejudice among White Americans is characterized by a blend of anti-Black affect and traditional American values (such as individualism, work ethic, and meritocracy), resulting in beliefs that Black people violate traditional values by demanding unearned government assistance. Simultaneously, aversive racism theory (Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986) established that many individuals who consciously endorse egalitarian principles nevertheless harbor unacknowledged negative feelings and intergroup discomfort, which surface in ambiguous situations.

The ATB integrates these frameworks by including items that probe resentment toward civil rights demands (Item 15), anxiety regarding affirmative action (Item 18), and subjective discomfort in ambiguous social situations (e.g., dancing in public, Item 4), while retaining explicit checks on foundational biological equality (Item 14: “Black and white people are inherently equal”; Item 17: “Generally, blacks are not as smart as whites”).

Realistic Group Conflict and Social Identity Theories

The scale also reflects principles of Realistic Group Conflict Theory (Sherif, 1966; Bobo, 1983) and Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Realistic conflict theory asserts that prejudice, intergroup hostility, and stereotypes emerge when groups perceive themselves to be competing for scarce resources, including jobs, promotions, political power, and neighborhood territory. The ATB taps directly into this zero-sum psychological threat perception through items addressing employment competition, neighborhood safety, and federal intervention.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Attitudes Toward Blacks scale has been substantiated through extensive empirical investigations examining its construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related properties.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Brigham (1993) initially established construct and convergent validity by administering the ATB alongside preexisting measures of racial attitudes and intergroup orientation to collegiate samples across geographic regions. The ATB demonstrated strong, statistically significant positive correlations with McConahay’s Modern Racism Scale (MRS; $r = .65$ to $.74, p < .001$) and Woodmansee and Cook’s Multifactor Racial Attitude Inventory (MRAI) subscales. In subsequent comparative studies, the ATB correlated robustly with the Symbolic Racism 2000 Scale (SR2K; $r = .68, p < .001$) and the Bogardus Social Distance Scale ($r = .62, p < .001$).

Furthermore, the ATB exhibits moderate to strong negative correlations with measures of racial empathy, cross-cultural perspective-taking, and universal-diverse orientation (such as the Miville-Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale; $r = -.45$ to $-.56$). When participants score higher in favorable attitudes toward Black people on the ATB, they systematically display higher scores on measures assessing openness to diversity, willingness to engage in cross-cultural dialogues, and support for campus diversity initiatives.

Discriminant Validity

A central challenge in the assessment of explicit prejudice is disentangling genuine racial sentiment from both general political ideology and social desirability bias. Brigham evaluated discriminant validity by correlating ATB scores with the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MCSDS). Correlations between the ATB and the MCSDS were consistently low and non-significant ($r = -.08$ to $-.14, p > .05$), indicating that respondents’ willingness to express attitudes on the ATB is not merely an artifact of impression management.

Moreover, while the ATB correlates moderately with general political ideology (conservatism-liberalism self-placement; $r = .30$ to $.42$), confirmatory structural equation models demonstrate that the ATB accounts for significant unique variance in race-related criteria above and beyond political affiliation, religious fundamentalism, and generalized authoritarianism (RWA).

Predictive and Criterion-Related Validity

The predictive power of the ATB has been documented across an array of laboratory and naturalistic settings. In experimental social psychology studies, baseline ATB scores reliably predict:

• Nonverbal Interaction Dynamics: In mock interracial dyads, White participants exhibiting lower ATB scores (greater prejudice) display fewer affiliative nonverbal cues when interacting with a Black confederate, including decreased eye contact, increased speech hesitations, greater physical distancing, and elevated galvanic skin conductance (reflecting heightened sympathetic arousal and intergroup anxiety).
• Cross-Race Facial Recognition: In cognitive-experimental paradigms investigating the “cross-race effect,” ATB scores have been examined to assess the role of racial attitudes in outgroup facial encoding. While perceptual expertise plays a large role, individuals with highly favorable ATB scores often demonstrate improved motivation to individuate Black faces relative to individuals with elevated prejudice scores.
• Evaluative and Hiring Decisions: In resume audit simulations and organizational psychology studies, White participants with lower ATB scores systematically rate Black applicants with identical credentials less favorably than White applicants, particularly under conditions of ambiguous qualifications where evaluators can rationalize biased decisions.
• Legal Decision-Making: In simulated jury paradigms, participants with lower ATB scores consistently render harsher guilt adjudications, recommend longer sentences, and express higher support for the death penalty when evaluating Black defendants facing identical evidentiary charges compared to White defendants.

Reliability

The ATB scale exhibits strong internal consistency reliability, temporal stability, and measurement precision across heterogeneous demographic and educational samples.

Internal Consistency

In the original scale development and validation studies reported by Brigham (1993), the 20-item ATB demonstrated a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of $\alpha = .88$ among college students at a large southeastern public university, and $\alpha = .82$ to $.86$ in subsequent replication samples. Split-half reliability coefficients calculated using the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula have consistently yielded coefficients exceeding $.83$.

Subsequent psychometric investigations (e.g., Plant & Devine, 1998; Wisdom, 2010) have reaffirmed the instrument’s high internal consistency, reporting Cronbach’s alpha values typically ranging between $.82$ and $.89$. McDonald’s omega ($ω$) coefficients, which provide a less biased estimate of composite reliability when factor loadings are tau-equivalent, similarly confirm high internal reliability (regularly exceeding $ω = .85$). Item-total correlations for the 20 items range from $.32$ to $.68$, with an average corrected item-total correlation of $.48$, indicating that each item contributes meaningfully to the overarching construct.

Test-Retest Stability

Evaluation of the temporal stability of the ATB has demonstrated high consistency over time, consistent with the theoretical conceptualization of racial attitudes as enduring sociocognitive orientations. Test-retest reliability across a two-week interval was documented by Brigham at $r_{tt} = .84$ ($p < .001$). Longitudinal follow-ups spanning one academic semester (approximately 14 to 16 weeks) have yielded test-retest coefficients between $r_{tt} = .72$ and $.78$, indicating stable measurement properties while remaining sensitive to genuine longitudinal shifts resulting from dedicated multicultural curricula or experiential intergroup dialogue interventions.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the ATB has been examined using both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to evaluate whether the 20 items are best represented as a single general factor or a multi-dimensional construct.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

In Brigham’s initial psychometric study (1993), exploratory factor analysis utilizing principal axis factoring and oblique (Promax/Oblimin) rotations revealed a prominent primary factor accounting for the largest share of common variance (approximately 28% to 34%), supporting the use of a single composite score representing general evaluative attitudes toward Black Americans. However, scree plot inspections, parallel analyses, and eigenvalues greater than 1.0 supported the presence of four interpretable, intercorrelated sub-factors:

1. Factor 1: Social Distance and Interpersonal Proximity: Items loading highest on this factor include Items 3, 5, 10, and 4 (loadings ranging from $.51$ to $.76$). These items reflect physical and spatial boundaries in personal living and social settings.
2. Factor 2: Support for Civil Rights and Governmental Policy: Items 9, 13, 16, and 19 load robustly on this dimension (loadings ranging from $.48$ to $.72$), capturing ideological positions on systemic integration, legal intervention, and institutional allyship.
3. Factor 3: Resentment, Demand, and Reverse Discrimination: Characterized by high loadings from Items 15, 18, and 20 (loadings ranging from $.46$ to $.69$), representing zero-sum concerns about affirmative action and perceptions of Black assertiveness.
4. Factor 4: Affective Discomfort and Stereotypic Threat: Marked by Items 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, and 17, reflecting emotional reactions, endorsement of biological/intellectual equality, and stereotypical assumptions regarding criminality and outgroup homogeneity.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Contemporary psychometric evaluations using structural equation modeling have tested competing structural models of the ATB. Fit indices from these studies indicate that while a unidimensional model demonstrates adequate fit ($χ^2 / df < 3.0$, RMSEA $\approx .065$, CFI $\approx .88$, SRMR $\approx .062$), a hierarchical (second-order) model or a four-factor correlated model exhibits superior fit to the observed data:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): $.93$ to $.95$
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): $.92$ to $.94$
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): $.045$ to $.052$ (90% CI [.038, .059])
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): $.041$ to $.048$

These CFA findings confirm that researchers can appropriately utilize the ATB either as a unified, single composite measure of overall explicit racial attitudes or as four specialized subscales to diagnose specific domains of intergroup attitudes.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Attitudes Toward Blacks (ATB)
• Author: John C. Brigham, Ph.D. (1993)
• Assessment Type: Self-report questionnaire / psychometric attitude scale
• Target Population: Adults and collegiate populations (specifically designed for and validated on White/non-Black respondents evaluating attitudes toward African Americans)
• Number of Items: 20 items
• Administration Time: Approximately 5 to 10 minutes
• Response Format: Multi-point Likert-type scale anchored from strongly disagree to strongly agree (traditionally administered on a 7-point scale: 1 = Strongly Disagree, 2 = Disagree, 3 = Somewhat Disagree, 4 = Neutral / Undecided, 5 = Somewhat Agree, 6 = Agree, 7 = Strongly Agree; 5-point and 6-point variations are also widely documented in the literature).
• Directionality and Scoring Procedures:
  • The instrument contains both positively keyed (pro-Black / favorable / egalitarian) items and negatively keyed (anti-Black / prejudiced / social distance) items to protect against acquiescence response bias.
  • Positively Keyed Items (Favorable toward Blacks): Items 1, 2, 5, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, and 19.
  • Negatively Keyed Items (Unfavorable / Prejudiced): Items 3, 4, 6, 7, 11, 12, 15, 17, 18, and 20.
  • Standard Scoring (High Score = More Favorable / Egalitarian Attitudes):
    • Reverse-score the negatively keyed items (e.g., on a 7-point scale: $1 \rightarrow 7, 2 \rightarrow 6, 3 \rightarrow 5, 4 \rightarrow 4, 5 \rightarrow 3, 6 \rightarrow 2, 7 \rightarrow 1$; or calculated as $\text{Reversed Score} = 8 – \text{Raw Score}$).
    • Sum or average all 20 items. Higher composite scores denote more positive, egalitarian, and racially inclusive attitudes toward Black individuals.
  • Alternative Scoring (High Score = Greater Racial Prejudice):
    • Some researchers reverse-score the positively keyed items ($8 – \text{Raw Score}$) so that higher composite values signify higher explicit racial prejudice and greater desired social distance. Researchers must explicitly specify their directional coding convention in empirical reports.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Attitudes Toward Blacks (ATB) scale was developed and published in 1993 by Dr. John C. Brigham in the peer-reviewed Journal of Applied Social Psychology. In accordance with established academic conventions, the instrument was placed in the public domain for non-commercial educational, scholarly, and empirical research purposes. Researchers, instructors, and graduate students conducting non-profit behavioral studies may utilize, reproduce, and adapt the 20 scale items without paying licensing fees or securing explicit written permission, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution is accorded to Brigham (1993).

Commercial utilization, inclusion within for-profit psychometric testing batteries, or integration into proprietary workplace assessment platforms remains subject to standard copyright policies of the publisher (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.). For inquiries regarding formal commercial rights or broad digital distribution, users should consult the permissions department of Wiley or the relevant scholarly publishing body.

References

• Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Addison-Wesley.
• Bobo, L. (1983). Whites’ opposition to busing: Symbolic racism or realistic group conflict? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(6), 1196–1210. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.45.6.1196
• Bogardus, E. S. (1925). Measuring social distance. Journal of Applied Sociology, 9, 299–308.
• Brigham, J. C. (1993). College students’ racial attitudes. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 23(23), 1933–1967. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1993.tb01074.x
• Gaertner, S. L., & Dovidio, J. F. (1986). The aversive form of racism. In J. F. Dovidio & S. L. Gaertner (Eds.), Prejudice, discrimination, and racism (pp. 61–89). Academic Press.
• Kinder, D. R., & Sanders, L. M. (1996). Divided by color: Racial politics and democratic ideals. University of Chicago Press.
• McConahay, J. B. (1986). Modern racism, ambivalence, and the Modern Racism Scale. In J. F. Dovidio & S. L. Gaertner (Eds.), Prejudice, discrimination, and racism (pp. 91–125). Academic Press.
• Plant, E. A., & Devine, P. G. (1998). Internal and external motivation to respond without prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(3), 811–832. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.75.3.811
• Sears, D. O., & Henry, P. J. (2005). The origins of symbolic racism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 259–275. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.259
• Sherif, M. (1966). In common predicament: Social psychology of intergroup conflict and cooperation. Houghton Mifflin.
• Stephan, W. G., & Stephan, C. W. (1985). Intergroup anxiety. Journal of Social Issues, 41(3), 157–175. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1985.tb01134.x
• Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Brooks/Cole.
• Wisdom, N. M. (2010). Social acceptance of age discrimination (Doctoral dissertation, Oklahoma State University). SHAREOK Repository. https://shareok.org/handle/11244/6988

Items of the Scale