Who’s Confronting: An Examination of Motivations to Confront Prejudice and Their Effects on Personal and Collective Esteem

Expressed prejudice can lead to negative long term effects for the person, or group, that the comments are being targeted toward (Gervais et al., 2010). However, the verbal confrontation of expressed prejudice can lead to a decrease in these negative effects (Richards & Gross, 2000). While Chaney and Sanchez (2021) identified how people carry out these verbal confrontations, there is limited research on why people confront prejudice. This limited research has revealed that people confront prejudice because they are either internally motivated to do so, externally motivated to not “look bad”, or externally motivated to “look good” (O’Dea, Plant, & Garcia, in Preparation). We investigated whether people’s motivations to confront prejudice affect personal esteem (how one feels about themselves) and collective esteem (how one feels about the social groups to which they belong) after they, their “in-group”, or their “out-group”, confront prejudice. We showed participants a situation in which they viewed another White individual expressing prejudice toward a Black person. This person was either not confronted, confronted by an “out-group” member (Black person), confronted by an “in-group” member (White person), or the participant imagined that they did the confrontation themselves. Building on existing research on esteem’s effects on well-being, evaluations of others, and prejudice, we hypothesized that participants internally motivated to confront prejudice would get a boost in both personal and collective esteem when reading about any situation in which the holder of the prejudice is confronted due to the strong anti-prejudiced attitudes they hold. However, those externally motivated to confront prejudice were predicted not to get a boost in esteem unless it was they, themselves, confronting the perpetrator of the prejudice, because this motivation is centered around performative activism. These hypotheses were not supported, but there was a significant correlation found between people’s motivational identification (internal, external to not look bad, or external to look good) and their preferred method of confrontation. Those internally motivated had a higher positive correlation with more effective methods of confrontation which included that of confronting the situation from a more educational and empathetic manner. This was emphasized by the finding that those that identify themselves to be externally motivated were more likely to choose less effective confrontation styles including combating the act of prejudice through an argumentative and humorous style. Our findings demonstrate the contrast between the confrontation styles and methods that are chosen between the internally and externally motivated person, with the internally motivated person choosing the most effective and appropriate forms of confronting, and the externally motivated person choosing more crowd standout and less effective styles.