Browsing by Subject "prejudice"

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    CONFRONT OR NOT TO CONFRONT: THE INFLUENCE OF CONFRONTATION SELF-EFFICACY AND POWER ON CHALLENGING PREJUDICE
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2012-04-13) Millspaugh, Brandon; English, Christal
    Research shows that confrontation is an effective way to reduce prejudice (Czopp, Monteith, & Mark, 2006), yet there are many obstacles to challenging prejudice as outlined by The Confronting Prejudiced Responses Model (Ashburn-Nardo, Morris, & Goodwin, 2008). The current study tested how confrontation self-efficacy (CSE), defined as individuals’ confidence in their ability to challenge bias, and perpetrator power over the potential confronter influence the decision to confront. 120 participants were led to believe they would be working with a fellow participant (actually a confederate) and were then randomly assigned to one of two conditions: equal or lower power (in relation to the confederate). After reviewing an article about a Black Student Union, participants engaged in an electronic chat session with the confederate as part of a supposed peer review study. During the chat, they witnessed a prejudiced remark, to which they had the chance to respond. Contrary to predictions, results showed that participants higher in CSE were significantly less likely to confront. Surprisingly, CSE was related to avoiding embarrassment and conflict. These results suggest that people higher in CSE more closely consider potential negative outcomes or consequences of confronting a prejudiced remark.
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    Target perceptions of prejudice confrontations: the effect of confronter group membership on perceptions of confrontation motive and target empowerment
    (2017-04) Chu, Charles; Ashburn-Nardo, Leslie
    The current study examined African American participants’ perceptions of and reactions to a White ally vs. a Black target (vs. a no confrontation control condition) prejudice confrontation. Based on intergroup helping theories suggesting that low-status group members question high-status helper motivations and consequently feel disempowered by their help (Fisher, Nadler, & Whitcher-Alagna, 1982; Nadler, 2002), we predicted that participants would report lower empowerment when a White vs. Black person confronted on their behalf, and that perceived confronter motivation would mediate the effect of confronter group membership on empowerment. To test these hypotheses, we recruited African American participants (N = 477) via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, randomly assigned them to either a no confrontation control, target confrontation, or ally confrontation condition, and then assessed participants’ sense of psychological empowerment and perceptions of the confronter’s motivation. The results supported our predictions for the primary dependent variables, and mediation analyses provided evidence for a causal model such that confronter group membership affected participants’ psychological empowerment via their perceptions of the confronter’s motivation. The findings suggest that although both target and ally confrontations are preferable to no confrontation, allies should be aware of the possible disempowering effect of their confronting on targets of prejudice and the importance of their own motivations when engaging in prejudice confrontation. The current study further emphasizes the importance of representing targets’ perspectives in studies of prejudice.