Implicit Prejudice Differentially Predicts Placement Into Valuable and Scarce Opportunities

Racial excellence gaps persist, partly due to unequal participation in advanced learning opportunities. Guided by the opportunity hoarding framework, this research investigates whether White Americans’ pro-White/anti-Black prejudice differentially predict simulated Advanced Placement (AP) course admission decisions, and under what conditions—when the opportunity is valuable, scarce, or both. Across two experiments, we observed an unexpected overall pattern in which Black students were placed into higher priority tiers than White students. Nonetheless, greater implicit prejudice predicted larger White–Black differences in placement decisions, explained by placing Black students into lower tiers rather than White students into higher tiers. Critically, we found preliminary evidence that this pattern emerges only when AP participation was described as both valuable and scarce. Explicit prejudice showed less consistent associations with differences in placement decisions across studies. The valuable and scarce nature of advanced learning opportunities may amplify the effect of implicit prejudice in deciding who deserves access.