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In the shadow of the stars and stripes: testing the malleability of U.S. support for Puerto Rican statehood

2020; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 33; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17457289.2020.1821037

1745-7297

Abdiel Santiago, Alexander Kustov, Ali A. Valenzuela,

Social and Intergroup Psychology

Do voters update their racialized political preferences in response to new information? To answer this long-standing question, we conduct an original survey examining U.S. mainland attitudes toward towards Puerto Rican statehood, a rare consequential racialized issue of low salience. To test whether public support for statehood can be changed, we embedded an information experiment describing Puerto Rico's political status and its relationship to the U.S. The treatment was designed to increase the perceived connection between the groups through effortful thinking. Descriptively, our results indicate that Americans are generally ambivalent to the idea of Puerto Rico becoming the 51st state. We further find that opposition to statehood is related to anti-immigration attitudes, conservative ideology, and lack of knowledge about the issue. Nonetheless, we also show that highly racialized opposition to statehood can be significantly decreased among all groups of voters by providing simple background information on U.S. and Puerto Rico's relationship.