How Do Non-Black U.S. College Students Think They Would Feel After Committing a Race-Related Interpersonal Transgression?

Debate over the appropriateness of discussing racism in U.S. educational settings is ongoing. Whereas some believe will improve race relations, others argue that such discussions are divisive and cause unnecessary distress, especially among White students. In a preregistered study, we investigated whether people who do not identify as Black or African American indeed experience emotional distress response to suggestion they may have acted manner indicating subtle anti-Black bias. Non-Black college students (N = 326; mean age 18.86; 69.0% women, 30.4% men, 0.6% reported another gender; 56.1% White, 16.9% Asian/Pacific Islander, 16.6% Hispanic, 2.1% race/ethnicity, 5.7% multiple racial/ethnic identities) imagined committing two interpersonal transgressions, one which was race-related. For each transgression, participants their feelings about situation, including how responsible would feel for perpetrating transgression negatively themselves. Overall, many feeling themselves when imagining race-related transgression. However, this more common scored higher on measures habitual concern behaving nonprejudiced ways, these also tended report an open-ended measure react by apologizing correcting behavior. Our results suggest that, racism, those most likely already concerned expressing prejudice. Accordingly, benefit from mentioning ways reduce