Table 4.

Class-specific average racial attitudes from pooled data

	Non-Hispanic whites’ rating of blacks
Class membership	Economic poverty**	Welfare dependence***	Intelligence***	Easiness to get along***
1	5.17	5.21	2.86	2.71
2	5.17	4.84	2.79	2.99
3	5.08	4.49	3.01	3.09
4	5.06	4.16	3.26	3.42
5	4.99	3.71	3.39	3.55

Figures are means on a scale from 1–7, where 7 is the positive end of a bipolar rating continuum. The wording of the questions for the four measures is as follows:

Economic poverty: Now, I have some questions about different groups in our (US) society. I’m going to show you a seven-point scale on which the characteristics of people in a group can be rated. In the first statement, a score of 1 means that you think almost all the people in that group are “rich.” A score of 7 means that you think almost everyone in the group is “poor.” A score of 4 means that you think the group is not toward one end or the other, and, of course, you may choose any number in-between that comes closest to where you think people in the group stand. Where would you rate (GROUP) on this scale, where 1 means tends to be rich and 7 means tends to be poor?

Welfare dependence: Next, for each group, I want to know whether you think they tend to prefer to be self-supporting or tend to prefer to be on welfare. Where would you rate (GROUP) on this scale, where 1 means tends to prefer to be self-supporting and 7 means tends to prefer to be on welfare? A score of 4 means that you think the group is not toward one end or the other, and, of course, you may choose any number in-between that comes closest to where you think people in the group stand.

Intelligence (reverse-coded): Next, for each group, I want to know whether you think they tend to be intelligent or tend to be unintelligent. Where would you rate (GROUP) on this scale, where 1 means tends to be intelligent and 7 means tends to be unintelligent? A score of 4 means that you think the group is not toward one end or the other end, and, of course, you may choose any number in-between that comes closest to where you think people in the group stand.

Easiness to get along (reversed-coded): Next, for each group I want to know if you think they tend to be easy to get along with or tend to be hard to get along with. Where would you rate (GROUP) on this scale, where 1 means tends to be easy to get along with and 7 means tends to be hard to get along with? A score of 4 means that you think the group is not toward one end or the other, and, of course, you may choose any number in-between that comes closest to where you think people in the group stand.

**P < 0.05; ***P < 0.001 (two-tailed tests for correlation coefficients between class membership and racial attitudes).