Publication Date:
2009-01-10
Description:
Contemporary race relations are marked by an apparent paradox: Overt prejudice is strongly condemned, yet acts of blatant racism still frequently occur. We propose that one reason for this inconsistency is that people misunderstand how they would feel and behave after witnessing racism. The present research demonstrates that although people predicted that they would be very upset by a racist act, when people actually experienced this event they showed relatively little emotional distress. Furthermore, people overestimated the degree to which a racist comment would provoke social rejection of the racist. These findings suggest that racism may persevere in part because people who anticipate feeling upset and believe that they will take action may actually respond with indifference when faced with an act of racism.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Kawakami, Kerry -- Dunn, Elizabeth -- Karmali, Francine -- Dovidio, John F -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2009 Jan 9;323(5911):276-8. doi: 10.1126/science.1164951.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3J 1P3. kawakami@yorku.ca〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19131633" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
*Affect
;
Anger
;
*Emotions
;
Female
;
Humans
;
Logistic Models
;
Male
;
*Prejudice
;
*Social Behavior
;
Social Identification
;
Social Perception
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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