Cognitive Dissonance: Opposing Views of Interracial Marriage | Psychology Today

This year marks the 55th anniversary of the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, which struck down anti-miscegenation laws in 16 states and allowed persons of different races to marry from coast to coast.

In considering this historic ruling, some will smile, sit back, and reflect on how far we’ve come. Many might even echo the 1970s Virginia Slims cigarette commercial and say, “We’ve come a long way, baby.” An event that got national press coverage last week may suggest otherwise.

U.S. Senator Mike Braun of Indiana said that the U.S. Supreme Court should have left the decision of whether to ban interracial marriage up to the states (Wright, 2022). Five hours later, Senator Braun walked back his comment, insisting that he's against racial discrimination in all forms.

These contradictory statements can produce cognitive dissonance; people prefer consistency, and when we are confronted with opposing information, our brain tends to resist (Acharya et al., 2018). Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable, and Braun's supporters and people quick to give folks the benefit of the doubt can resolve it by choosing to believe his walk back and doubling down on the notion that he is trustworthy and sincere. Regardless, there is evidence that Braun is not alone in his wish that we could change the 1967 ruling or go back to a time before it.

Sentiments for turning back time to before the Loving v. Virginia ruling are actually quite popular. A majority of Americans in 2021 believe “American culture and way of life” have gotten worse since the 1950s (Durkee, 2021), and many polls over the last six years signal a nostalgia for the “good old days”.

This was a time when individual states chose the rights of their citizens, such as whom one could marry, a time when sundown laws and other Jim Crow legislation reigned in the south and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 had yet to be passed (Killian, 2013).

"American culture and way of life" may be viewed as having been great "back in the day" for a majority of white Americans but they are thinking only of themselves. A little perspective-taking would allow consideration of how olden days were experienced by non-white Americans.

Of course, readers can resolve the cognitive dissonance created in the previous paragraph by simply committing even further to their belief that "the 1950s were better than today. I don't care what anyone else says, or how they experienced those days." Another way to handle the dissonance is to say, "It was great for me and mine, but that wasn't everyone's experience, and that's an important consideration, too." This approach requires empathy.

Some persons today are still opposed to interracial relationships, and others occupy the middle ground and say they just aren't sure. For instance, 33 years after the Loving v. Virginia ruling, Alabama became the last state to repeal a ban against interracial marriage. The repeal of such a ban represents progress, but a less known follow-up story is that 41 percent of Alabamans voted against lifting the ban.

Today, 12 percent of whites, 9 percent of Blacks, but only 3 percent of Latinos (the most common interracial couple is one Hispanic and one white spouse) express opposition to interracial marriage in polls conducted by the Pew Research Center. But far more folks ride the fence, indicating that they “neither favor nor oppose” interracial marriage. Consider them “the profoundly ambivalent.” They have placed their contradictory ideas and views on the subject on hold, in a kind of suspended animation, and perhaps avoided dissonance that way.

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Nevertheless, we have come a long way since the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision. A higher percentage of Americans now say interracial marriage is "good for society" than they did 10 years ago.

Pockets of resistance to interracial marriage persist: Folks with a high school education or less, who live in rural areas, or are 65 or older have the highest percentages who say intermarriage is "a bad thing for society" (Pew Research Center, 2017). Implicit bias is a real thing; a proxy for assessing prejudice includes assessment items tapping negative attitudes toward interracial marriage and multiracial children (see John Duckitt's work).

Based on Duckitt's research on measuring prejudice, folks that oppose interracial marriage and the creation of multiracial children may be signaling a negative bias about persons who differ from them on the basis of race. That is, people can be "good persons" and be implicitly biased against persons of a different race.

Further, incidents such as a county registrar refusing to issue a marriage license to interracial couples have become rarer as time goes by, and judges have recently ruled that such denials represent a deprivation of the would-be spouses' basic rights as citizens. Again, we have come a long way, and some folks are still very opposed to intermarriage and still more others haven't made up their minds about it. Both ideas, "progress has been made" and "we still have a ways to go", can coexist and can be accepted as is.

In conclusion, when it comes to hot mic comments and contradictory positions like that expressed by Senator Braun, another way to resolve the discomfort that comes from the resulting cognitive dissonance is to simply heed Maya Angelou's advice: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”