ABSTRACT
The race-related programs should attempt to give the beneficiaries feelings of personal control over their outcomes, perhaps by providing subsidized jobs and child care so that people can work, rather than giving simple external help or handouts, however generous. The consequences at the societal level of widespread belief in the dominant ideology include unsympathetic attitudes toward the poor and racial minorities, for they are blamed for their own lack of progress. The chapter examines the effects of beliefs about inequality on people's emotional reactions to their life situations. The more positive emotions were also the more commonly claimed by respondents. Of the eight, the order from most to least prevalent is thankful, happy, proud, confident, worried, frustrated, disappointed, and guilty. Specific investigations of the relationships of emotions to explanations have been conducted by Weiner and his associates. The relationship holds cross-culturally, even when the culture itself generally teaches external rather than internal explanations.
