Removing Confederate monuments did not measurably change racial bias, study finds

A new study examining whether Confederate monuments influence racial prejudice found no significant effect on either explicit or implicit bias. The research, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin and led by Maximilian A. Primbs of Radboud University, aimed to determine if physical presence or removal of these statues alters community attitudes.

While Confederate monuments represent historical inequalities and have been controversial, the study suggests their mere presence does not directly change subconscious or conscious racial attitudes. The researchers analyzed data from 1.75 million white participants and found no reliable shifts in racial bias after monuments were taken down.

This conflicts with a previous 2019 study that found college campuses with Confederate monuments had higher implicit bias among students. Primbs and his team propose three explanations for the discrepancy: the earlier result might have been a false positive, the correlation could reflect an unmeasured third factor, or college campuses may operate differently than broader communities.

The study's findings suggest that social and cultural environments may have a more significant impact on racial biases than the physical presence of monuments.