Date of Award

2015

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

Confronting has the potential to reduce prejudice, especially when implemented by a non-target group member. Not knowing how to respond and fearing social rejection have been identified as barriers to confronting in previous studies. The current study tests whether providing training to confront prejudice and affirming the need to belong helps individuals overcome these barriers. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three training conditions: prejudice confrontation training (PCT), rude comment training (RCT), or no training control group (NT). Participants were also randomly assigned to one of two belonging conditions: belonging affirmation or control. Participants were then asked to imagine that a friend posted a racist Facebook comment on their page, and were asked to respond to the comment. Responses were coded for whether participants labeled the comment as racist, number of confrontation responses and strategy use. Training, belonging, and race interacted to predict participants’ confronting behavior. PCT increased confrontations for participants of color, whereas RCT did so for Whites. Whites confronted more when belonging was affirmed, whereas participants of color did so when belonging was not affirmed.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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