On the Effects of Confederate Monuments and their Removal

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 implicit racial biases of people in that area. Across multiple large-scale data analyses (N1 = 1,728,472), three experiments (N2a = 1161, N2b = 416, N3 = 91), and a field study (N4 = 176), we find no evidence that the presence or removal of Confederate monuments reliably affects the implicit racial biases of people. Implications for situational models of bias and best research practices for conducting geographical difference studies are discussed.