On Confederate Monuments, Their Removal and Racial Bias

The presence of Confederate monuments and their removal has been a frequent topic of societal discussion in the United States. Taking a situational perspective (i.e. the Bias of Crowds model), the present paper investigated whether the presence of Confederate monuments and their removal from an area causally affect the racial biases of people in that area. Across multiple large-scale data analyses ( N 1 = 1,753,557), online experiments ( N 2a = 1,164, N 2b = 416, N 3 = 537), and a field study ( N 4 = 176), we found no evidence that the presence or removal of Confederate monuments reliably affects the implicit (or explicit) racial biases of people. We discuss implications for situational models of bias and best research practices for conducting geographical difference studies.