Reducing Performative Activism through a Short Online Intervention

The current body of research on prejudice confrontation has mainly focused on how people confront prejudice, yet little is known about what actually motivates a person to stand up and engage in confrontation. Our research team has established that people who are internally motivated (i.e., personally care about reducing prejudice in society) are more likely to confront prejudice when presented with the opportunity, and they tend to choose more effective confrontation styles (Empathy and Education). However, externally motivated people (i.e., those who confront to look good to other people) are less likely to confront and choose less effective confrontation styles (Humor, Help-seeking, and Argumentative). Indeed, if society is to reduce expressions of prejudice, it seems that the best way may be to increase people’s internal motivations toward prejudice reduction. Therefore, the purpose of my study is to examine the nature of people’s motivation to confront prejudice and whether or not we can shift their motivation toward being less external and more internal. We will present participants with false feedback after they filled out a questionnaire containing measures that appear to be measuring constructs related to race and social interactions (the Symbolic Racism scale, the Big Five personality test, the Prejudice Confrontation Style, and the Internal and External Motivations to respond without prejudice Scale). One group (Performative Salience Group) will be told that, based on their responses, their confrontation is not likely to work since others would view them as being performative (i.e., externally motivated) while another group (Control Group) will be told that their confrontation will likely work since others would view them as being genuine (i.e., internally motivated). Afterward, they were presented with ambiguous racist scenarios and presented with an option to confront or not confront. Replicating our previous studies, we expect that those who enter the study more internally motivated will be more likely to confront prejudice generally. Additionally, we predict that making salient that participants will be viewed negatively for performative activism (Performative Salience Group) will be more likely to reconsider their actions, confront more, and will be more likely to report doing so for internal reasons because they were confronted with a lack of respect from others for their performative activism. We predict that this effect may even be stronger for those entering the study with more external motivations because they are especially concerned with their reputation in the eyes of others. The implications of this study extend to our current knowledge of prejudice confrontation as well as creating a new effective strategy to invoke one’s internal motivation to stand up to prejudice. For example, colleges and universities could more strongly promote their anti-racist ideologies by setting a norm of intolerance of performative activism.