Beliefs About What Disadvantaged Groups Would Do With Power Shape Advantaged Groups’ (Un)Willingness to Relinquish It

Dominant groups often resist possible changes to the hierarchical status quo. Might such tendencies be partly rooted in negative—yet potentially malleable—meta-beliefs about how disempowered groups would use power if they gained control? We investigate these questions across three studies and eight independent samples (Total N = 7,460 analyzed responses) in the context of Black–White relations in the United States. Specifically, we examine White Americans’ meta-beliefs about whether Black Americans desire power to structure society into a hierarchy in which they are dominant versus to institute equality for all groups (i.e., meta-dominance beliefs). Across six cross-sectional subsamples (Study 1, Samples A–F; N = 3,383), we developed and validated a measure of meta-dominance, and found that White Americans varied substantially in their beliefs about how Black Americans would use power. Critically, Whites’ meta-dominance beliefs were uniquely related to their opposition to policies empowering Black Americans as well as their support for efforts to maintain Whites’ position atop the social hierarchy, even when controlling for a range of relevant constructs. In two preregistered experiments among White Americans (Studies 2 and 3; N = 4,077), one of which was a registered report, we tested two possible causal pathways that might explain this relation: (a) “Meta-Dominance Beliefs→Opposition to Black Empowerment” and (b) “Opposition to Black Empowerment → Meta-Dominance Beliefs.” We found evidence in support of the “Meta-Dominance Beliefs → Opposition to Black Empowerment” pathway, but not for the latter Opposition to Black Empowerment → “Meta-Dominance Beliefs” pathway. We discuss our findings’ implications for theories of hierarchy maintenance.