Target perceptions of prejudice confrontations: the effect of confronter group membership on perceptions of confrontation motive and target empowerment

Abstract

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.