The Development and Validation of the Outgroup Colorism Scale

The current study was conducted to develop and validate a scale to measure the construct of Colorism with an outgroup population. Colorism has been long-discussed phenomenon within the U.S. and abroad with publications like Color Matters: Skin Tone Bias and the Myth of a Post-Racial America, edited...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Bradley, Rachel E. (Author) ; Harvey, Richard D. (Author) ; DeRossett, Tommy (Author) ; Taylor, Nash (Author) ; Banks, Kira Hudson (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2025
In: Race and social problems
Year: 2025, Volume: 17, Issue: 4, Pages: 458-468
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Keywords:
Colorism
Racism
Shadism
Skin tone bias
Description
Summary:The current study was conducted to develop and validate a scale to measure the construct of Colorism with an outgroup population. Colorism has been long-discussed phenomenon within the U.S. and abroad with publications like Color Matters: Skin Tone Bias and the Myth of a Post-Racial America, edited by Kimberly Norwood (Color matters: Skin tone bias and the myth of a post-racial America, Routledge, 2014), documenting the history and present impact of skin tone bias across societies. To date, there have been very few attempts to measure the degree to which outgroup members (e.g., White Americans) embrace it and utilize this as evaluation for people of color. The Outgroup Colorism Scale (OCS) was developed as a companion measure to the Ingroup Colorism Scale (ICS) (Harvey et al. in J Black Psychol 43:740-764, 2017) to further address the significance and meaning that individuals placed on both their own skin tone and the skin tone of others. The OCS examines the degree to which skin tone variation is important across four essential domains: Impression Formation, Upward Mobility, Attraction, and Affiliation. The scale was empirically tested using a national sample of White Americans (N = 336). The OCS proved to have both good reliability and good structural validity. Moreover, the OCS proved to be significantly related to other important constructs such as color blindness, racial identification, racial socialization, and childhood neighborhood diversity. The implications of the OCS for both research and practical applications are discussed.
ISSN:1867-1756
DOI:10.1007/s12552-025-09453-1