Stereotypes of Whites as Racist (SWR)

Abstract

The Stereotypes of Whites as Racist (SWR) scale is a specialized psychometric instrument developed by David M. Tom (2002, 2006) at The Ohio State University to evaluate the extent to which racial minority group members—predominantly Black and Asian individuals—endorse generalized beliefs and outgroup stereotypes characterizing White individuals as inherently prejudiced, untrustworthy, and discriminatory. Comprising five primary Likert-type items alongside an auxiliary percentage estimation item, the SWR scale addresses a critical yet historically understudied dimension of intergroup relations: the content and structure of minority group members’ cognitive stereotypes toward the dominant racial majority. The primary items are evaluated along a 7-point Likert response format ranging from 1 (Completely Disagree) to 7 (Completely Agree), with balanced phrasing requiring the reverse-scoring of positively framed items to mitigate acquiescence bias. Psychometric evaluations of the scale demonstrate an internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) of $\alpha = .66$ within original collegiate and community minority samples, consistent with short-form exploratory scales in social cognition. The SWR scale has provided key empirical contributions to social identity research, the Rejection-Identification Model (RIM), attributional ambiguity, and investigations into how perceived discrimination shapes reciprocal intergroup attitudes, institutional trust, and psychological well-being among targeted minorities.

Keywords

Stereotypes of Whites as Racist, SWR scale, outgroup stereotypes, racial attitudes, perceived discrimination, intergroup relations, minority perspectives, racial stereotyping, social identity theory, attributional ambiguity

Authors

The Stereotypes of Whites as Racist (SWR) scale was formulated by David M. Tom, Ph.D., during his doctoral research in the Department of Psychology at The Ohio State University. His doctoral dissertation, titled Effects of perceived discrimination: rejection and identification as two distinct pathways and their associated effects (completed under academic advisement in social and clinical psychology), examined the mechanisms connecting experiences of racial rejection to group identification, outgroup stereotyping, and mental health outcomes.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Stereotypes of Whites as Racist (SWR) scale is to quantitatively capture minority individuals’ generalized expectations and cognitive schemas regarding the racial animus, untrustworthiness, and discriminatory inclinations of White Americans. For decades, intergroup psychometrics disproportionately focused on dominant majority stereotyping and prejudice toward marginalized groups. The SWR scale shifts this empirical paradigm by systematically investigating the reverse: how members of stigmatized racial minorities cognitively organize their perceptions of majority group members.

In research settings, the SWR scale is widely employed to investigate the downstream consequences of enduring structural and interpersonal racism. Grounded in social psychological frameworks, the scale enables researchers to assess whether exposure to systemic bias leads marginalized individuals to adopt defensive cognitive expectations—termed chronic vigilance or protective stereotyping—to buffer self-esteem and anticipate potential maltreatment. By measuring the extent to which individuals view racism as ubiquitous among the dominant outgroup, social scientists can differentiate between situational attributions of bias and generalized outgroup cynicism.

From an applied and institutional perspective, the SWR scale offers utility in cross-cultural, organizational, and collegiate climate research. Intergroup tensions, workplace mistrust, and cross-racial communication barriers often arise not only from overt prejudice by majority groups, but also from heightened expectations of discrimination held by minority members. By identifying the prevalence and correlates of these outgroup stereotypes, institutional diversity researchers and organizational psychologists can develop targeted intergroup dialogue interventions, deconstruct mutual mistrust, and evaluate the conditions under which authentic intergroup contact reduces generalized outgroup skepticism.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by the SWR scale is generalized outgroup stereotyping regarding dominant group racial animus. This construct reflects a coherent cognitive schema wherein members of a dominant group (specifically White individuals in Western contexts) are characterized as possessing covert or overt hostility toward racial minorities, being motivated by self-interest, and willing to enact racial discrimination when social accountability is absent.

The construct encompasses several distinct conceptual facets:

• Ubiquity of Prejudice: The cognitive presumption that racial prejudice is universal or near-universal across members of the dominant group (captured by items such as “All White people are racist”). This represents an essentialist attribution that racial animus is an intrinsic trait of the dominant group rather than an individual variable.
• Covert Discriminatory Intent: The belief that majority group members harbor suppressed or dormant biases that manifest whenever external sanctions are removed (e.g., “Just about all White people would discriminate against Blacks if others would not know”). This dimension directly reflects theoretical work on covert racism and structural mistrust.
• Interpersonal Trustworthiness: The skepticism directed toward majority individuals in interpersonal contexts (e.g., assessing the veracity of stereotypes portraying Whites as untrustworthy). This facet taps into historical and systemic betrayal, tracking generalized interpersonal alienation.
• Perceived Positive Intentions and Non-Prejudiced Exceptions (Reverse Facets): The degree to which minority individuals acknowledge positive intentions and encounter genuine cross-racial allies (e.g., “In dealing with Blacks, White people are generally well-intentioned” and “I’ve met many White people who did not seem to be prejudiced against me”). These items ground the construct by capturing variance in cognitive flexibility versus generalized outgroup rigidity.
• Population-Level Base-Rate Estimation: Operationalized as a quantitative percentage estimate (0–100%) indicating the perceived proportion of White individuals who harbor prejudice. This cognitive metric quantifies perceived intergroup threat at a macro-social level.

Theoretical Framework

The SWR scale is situated at the intersection of several core theories within social and personality psychology, most notably Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), the Rejection-Identification Model (RIM) formulated by Nyla R. Branscombe, Michael T. Schmitt, and Richard D. Harvey (1999), and the theory of Attributional Ambiguity developed by Jennifer Crocker and Brenda Major (1989).

According to the Rejection-Identification Model, chronic experiences of societal rejection and perceived discrimination prompt minority group members to increase identification with their own ingroup as a protective psychological coping mechanism. Concurrently, repeated exposure to racial rejection triggers outgroup hostility and generalized defensive stereotyping against the perpetrating dominant collective. Within Tom’s (2002, 2006) dual-pathway extension of the RIM, perceived discrimination operates through two distinct psychological trajectories: one leading to heightened minority ingroup identification, and another leading directly to outgroup rejection, manifested through the endorsement of stereotypes of Whites as racist. Under this formulation, outgroup stereotyping is not merely an irrational cognitive distortion, but a predictable sociocognitive adaptation forged through persistent structural and interpersonal marginalization.

Furthermore, Crocker and Major’s (1989) model of attributional ambiguity posits that stigmatized individuals routinely navigate social interactions uncertain of whether negative feedback or neutral treatment stems from their personal attributes or from the evaluator’s racial prejudice. Possessing high baseline endorsements on the SWR scale functions as a cognitive heuristic that resolves this ambiguity by pre-attributing negative intergroup encounters to widespread outgroup racism. While this heuristic serves an ego-protective function by safeguarding personal self-esteem from self-blame, it simultaneously creates heightened intergroup anxiety, suppresses expectations of positive cross-group interactions, and discourages mutual vulnerability.

Validity

Psychometric evaluations conducted across Tom’s (2002, 2006) empirical investigations establish initial evidence for the construct, convergent, and discriminant validity of the SWR scale:

Construct Validity

Construct validity is substantiated by the scale’s alignment with established behavioral and sociocognitive responses to systemic prejudice. Confirmatory patterns indicate that minority individuals who report greater exposure to everyday and institutional discrimination score significantly higher on the SWR scale. The inclusion of both forward-worded essentialist assertions (e.g., “All White people are racist”) and reverse-worded items evaluating goodwill ensures that the scale measures a coherent continuum of outgroup appraisals rather than an uncritical response set.

Convergent Validity

The SWR scale exhibits moderate to strong positive correlations with related intergroup and psychological constructs:

• Perceived Discrimination: Scores on the SWR correlate significantly with multidimensional measures of perceived discrimination, including the Schedule of Racist Events (SRE) and the Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS).
• Racial Centrality and Identity: As predicted by the Rejection-Identification Model, higher scores on the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (MIBI; Sellers et al., 1998)—specifically the Centrality and Nationalist ideology subscales—converge with higher SWR scores, indicating that individuals whose racial identity is central to their self-concept are more attuned to and cognizant of majority group prejudice.
• Systemic Mistrust: The scale correlates positively with measures of institutional cynicism and medical/legal system mistrust among minority populations.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated by examining the scale’s divergence from generalized negative affectivity, neuroticism, and global misanthropy. The SWR scale demonstrates non-significant or trivial correlations with standard measures of trait anxiety, chronic negative affect, and general social avoidance. This confirms that the scale measures specific racial outgroup schemas rather than diffuse personal cynicism or emotional distress. Furthermore, the SWR distinctively diverges from measures of internalized racism, demonstrating that outgroup stereotyping operates independently from beliefs regarding ingroup worth.

Reliability

In Tom’s foundational doctoral research (2002, 2006) utilizing a target sample of racial minority university students and community members, the 5-item SWR scale demonstrated an internal consistency coefficient of:

• Cronbach’s Alpha: $\alpha = .66$

While an alpha value of .66 falls slightly below the conventional psychometric threshold of $\alpha ge .70$ often demanded for standardized clinical diagnostics, it is accepted in exploratory psychological research and brief attitudinal inventories. Several measurement dynamics explain this coefficient:

1. Scale Brevity: Cronbach’s alpha is mathematically dependent on test length. With only 5 items, lower alpha coefficients are expected even when underlying item intercorrelations are robust. When adjusted using the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula, doubling the scale length would yield an estimated reliability exceeding $\alpha = .80$.
2. Bidirectional Item Wording: The presence of two reverse-scored items (Items 1 and 4) alongside three forward-scored items (Items 2, 3, and 5) introduces cognitive reframing, which frequently dampens raw internal consistency while significantly mitigating acquiescence response bias.
3. Subtle Dimensional Nuances: The scale taps both generalized categorical beliefs (“All White people are racist”) and nuanced experiential perceptions (“I’ve met many White people who did not seem to be prejudiced against me”), creating variance that reflects cognitive flexibility rather than instrument unreliability.

Factor Analysis

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) conducted during initial instrument evaluation supports a predominantly unidimensional construct accounting for the primary variance across the five Likert items. Scree plot inspections demonstrate a sharp drop-off after the first eigenvalue, indicating that a single general factor—Perceived White Racial Animus—underpins the measure.

While the auxiliary percentage estimation item correlates robustly with the composite latent factor ($r \approx .45 – .60$), it is typically analyzed as a continuous secondary index or modeled as an indicator in structural equation models rather than collapsed into the unweighted arithmetic Likert mean.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Stereotypes of Whites as Racist (SWR)
• Author: David M. Tom, Ph.D.
• Original Publication Date: 2002 (Dissertation defended 2006)
• Instrument Type: Self-report psychological scale / attitudinal assessment
• Target Population: Racial minority group members (originally developed for Black/African American respondents; validated and adaptable for Asian American respondents)
• Item Count: 5 primary Likert items + 1 auxiliary quantitative percentage estimation item
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert scale:
  • 1 = Completely Disagree
  • 2 = Somewhat Disagree
  • 3 = Slightly Disagree
  • 4 = Neutral
  • 5 = Slightly Agree
  • 6 = Somewhat Agree
  • 7 = Completely Agree
• Scoring Procedures:
  • Reverse Coding: Items 1 and 4 are phrased positively toward the outgroup and must be reverse-coded prior to composite calculation: $X_{\text{reversed}} = 8 – X$.
  • Direct Scoring: Items 2, 3, and 5 are maintained in their original numerical values.
  • Scale Score Calculation: The mean (or sum) of the five recoded items is calculated, producing a score ranging from 1.00 to 7.00. Higher composite scores signify greater endorsement of the stereotype that White individuals are untrustworthy, discriminatory, and racist.
  • Auxiliary Item: The percentage item is maintained on its natural continuous 0%–100% scale to assess subjective macro-level prejudice prevalence estimates.
• Target Adaptation Instructions: When administering the instrument to Asian participants, the author notes that instances of the word “Black(s)” are systematically substituted with “Asian(s)”.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Stereotypes of Whites as Racist (SWR) scale was formulated in 2002 and formally published in 2006 as part of David M. Tom’s doctoral dissertation at The Ohio State University, titled Effects of perceived discrimination: rejection and identification as two distinct pathways and their associated effects. The instrument is accessible via the OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center (OhioLINK ETD ID: osu1135887227).

The scale resides in the academic commons for educational and non-commercial empirical research purposes. No fee is required for its scholarly application. Researchers wishing to utilize, adapt, or translate the SWR scale are expected to cite the foundational dissertation and associated academic works in accordance with standard APA guidelines.

References

• Branscombe, N. R., Schmitt, M. T., & Harvey, R. D. (1999). Perceiving pervasive discrimination among African Americans: Implications for group identification and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(1), 135–149. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.1.135
• Crocker, J., & Major, B. (1989). Social stigma and self-esteem: The self-protective properties of stigma. Psychological Review, 96(4), 608–630. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.96.4.608
• Sellers, R. M., Rowley, S. A., Chavous, T. M., Shelton, J. N., & Smith, M. A. (1997). Multidimensional inventory of Black identity: A preliminary investigation of reliability and constuct validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(4), 805–815. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.73.4.805
• 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.
• Tom, D. M. (2002). Stereotypes of Whites as Racist (SWR). Unpublished test material, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University.
• Tom, D. M. (2006). Effects of perceived discrimination: Rejection and identification as two distinct pathways and their associated effects (Doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University). OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1135887227

Items of the Scale