The researchers discovered that when the company emphasized diversity, the political views of the White participants started to matter. White participants who identified as more conservative were more likely to favor the White job candidate.

Racial attitudes towards out-groups—including racial resentment, anti-immigrant sentiment, and white racial grievance—strongly correlate with anti-democratic beliefs, whereas in-group racial attitudes do not. Analysis of multiple waves of the American National Election Studies (ANES) reveals that racial resentment and white grievance now explain twice as much variation in anti-democratic beliefs as they did in 2012. Experimental evidence also demonstrates that white Americans react negatively to voting expansions when the racial implications of these reforms are made explicit. These findings underscore the growing alignment between anti-democratic beliefs and racial attitudes in contemporary U.S. politics.