Social media and racism: A state by state analysis of post 2012 Presidential election tweets By Cory Williams Faculty Advisor: Kilian Garvey, PhD The University of Louisiana – Monroe College of Business and Social Sciences Department of Psychology

Morality A person's standards of behavior or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do. [and while we did not directly measure moral cognition, most research in this area has found that conservative political and religious orientation, which we did measure, points to a more pronounced “in group” moral worldview]

Big Three of Morality Autonomy (personal) Community Divinity

The Golden Rule Buddhism- Just as I am so are they, just as they are so am I Taoism- Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor loss as your loss Christianity- Therefore all things whatsoever would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them

Racism: The poor treatment of or violence against people because of their race

Intelligence Those with lower general intelligence are less trusting, less sensitive of interpersonal cues, and less accurate in deciphering other people’s intentions and behaviors (Tuschman, 2013, p. 187)

In Group/Out Group Some churches are a form of in group Not accepting other than the dominate color of that church

Twitter A social media website where people can make post that are no longer than 140 characters Does that limit make a difference?

Map of 2013 racist tweets

Electoral Map

Negative Tweets about the Reelection

2012 tweets

Results (n = 50) 234 1= Racist Tweets 2= Conservative political orientation 3= Religious Beliefs 4=IQ r=.590 p <.001 r=.639 p <.001 r=.75 p <.001 r=-.421 p =.005 r=-.187 p =.194 r=-.460 p <.001 Multiple regression found that only self-described higher belief in god explained the variance (R 2 =.408, F(1,40)=27.61, p<.001). One way correlations

Conclusions While self described “belief in God” explained most of the variance in sending racist tweets, we believe there might be something else involved. To our knowledge, very few if any religions encourage ignorance, insensitivity, and outright racism, nor do political parties. However, there is a tendency for some people to feel more comfortable with tighter and more exclusionary in-groups, and they may be more likely to identify as political conservatives versus political liberals, and they may be more likely to join rigid “social” groups, including, but not limited to, conservative churches.

Implications: If racism, bigotry, and insensitivity are to be addressed, and, hopefully, reduced if not eliminated, the fundamental underlying “causes” must be identified. It may be difficult, if not impossible, to “get” someone to like someone they do not, however, if this is being caused by tighter ingroup v outgroup orientation, it may be helpful to change to topic of conversation to “we’re all on the same team.” To wit Michael Sam: Openly gay football player at the University of Missouri accepted and supported by the people that matter (his teammates) because they don’t see him as gay, they see him as a member of the team