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The Roles Of Self-Affirmation And Introspection In Correction For Automatic Prejudice, Kevin Lee Zabel

Doctoral Dissertations

Egalitarian-oriented Whites tend to employ the strategy of “liking everyone,” as opposed to correcting for their automatic prejudices, as a means of avoiding prejudiced reactions (Zabel & Olson, 2014). Congruent with motivational theoretical perspectives regarding prejudice (i.e., Aversive Racism; Gaertner & Dovidio), I contend that a lack of introspection into one’s automatic prejudices due to a self-image threat may be driving this tendency. In the experiment I report here, I assessed the automatic racial attitudes of egalitarian- (high Concern) and conflict avoidance-motivated (high Restraint) Whites. Then, participants were randomly assigned to introspect (or not) on their automatic racial biases, as …