Mispredicting Affective andBehavioral Responses to RacismKerry Kawakami,1* Elizabeth Dunn,2 Francine Karmali,1 John F. Dovidio3

Contemporary race relations are marked by an apparent paradox: Overt prejudice is stronglycondemned, yet acts of blatant racism still frequently occur. We propose that one reason for thisinconsistency is that people misunderstand how they would feel and behave after witnessingracism. The present research demonstrates that although people predicted that they would be veryupset by a racist act, when people actually experienced this event they showed relatively littleemotional distress. Furthermore, people overestimated the degree to which a racist comment wouldprovoke social rejection of the racist. These findings suggest that racism may persevere in partbecause people who anticipate feeling upset and believe that they will take action may actuallyrespond with indifference when faced with an act of racism.

Contemporary race relations are marked byan apparent paradox. On one hand, racismis strongly condemned (1–3), and being

labeled a “racist” has become a powerful stigmaof its own (4). On the other hand, acts of blatantracism against blacks still occur with alarmingregularity. A recent survey (5) found that 67% ofblacks indicated that they often face discrimina-tion and prejudice when applying for a job, and50% reported that they experienced racism whenengaging in such common activities as shoppingor dining out. For many blacks, derogatory racialcomments are a common occurrence, and almostone-third of whites report encountering anti-blackslurs in the workplace (6). Why would whites ex-hibit such overt racism if this behavior was sure toprovoke anger and social rejection from others oftheir own race?

We suggest that social deterrents to racismmay beweaker than public rhetoric implies. First,even if people are upset by an act of racism, theymay not penalize individuals for violating egal-itarian social norms because enforcing such normscan be costly (7–9). Confronting a racist or evenconfronting someone who does not rebuke racistscan consume cognitive and emotional energy. Sec-ond, peoplemay be less upset and less likely to takeaction in response to racism than they themselveswould anticipate. This possibility is supported byresearch demonstrating that people often makeinaccurate forecasts related to their emotionalresponses (10, 11), exhibiting a robust proclivity tooverestimate how upset they would feel in badsituations (12–14). This research has focused onaffective, and not behavioral, predictions. The pri-mary goal of the present research is to investigatediscrepancies between how people imagine theywould feel and behave and how they actually feeland behave upon hearing a racist comment.

According to aversive racism theory, evenindividuals who embrace egalitarian beliefs maycontinue to harbor nonconscious negative feelingstoward blacks (15, 16). Recent research demon-strates that, whereas egalitarian beliefs typicallyguide thoughtful, deliberative responses, linger-ing negative feelings toward blacks often emergein the context of more spontaneous responses(1, 3, 17–19). When contemplating their ownresponses to hypothetical situations, people tendto adopt a relatively deliberative mindset (10, 20),suggesting that people are likely to draw on theirconscious egalitarian values in imagining howthey would respond to an act of racism (21). Yet,when faced with actual racism, people’s sponta-neous feelings and behavior may reveal latentbias toward blacks. In accordance with this frame-work, we hypothesized that people who imaginedhearing a racist commentwould expect to bemoreupset and would overestimate the degree to whichthey would reject the racist compared with peoplewho actually heard the comment.

In an initial study investigating participants’actual and anticipated responses to an anti-black

slur, we assigned 120 participants who self-identified their race/ethnicity (e.g., black, Asian,Pakistani) to the role of “experiencer” or “fore-caster” and exposed them to an incident involvingno racial slur, a moderate racial slur, or an extremeracial slur. Because our goal was to examine howpeople who do not belong to the target grouprespond to racial slurs, black participants werenot included in this study (22). Upon entering thelaboratory, the experimenter introduced the ex-periencers to two male confederates—one blackand one white—who posed as fellow participants,and then the experimenter exited the room. Shortlythereafter, the black confederate left the room,ostensibly to retrieve his cell phone, and gentlybumped the white confederate’s knee on his wayout. In the control condition, this incident passedwithout comment. In the moderate slur condition,once the black confederate had left the room, thewhite confederate remarked, “Typical, I hate itwhen black people do that.” In the extreme racialslur condition, thewhite confederate stated, “clumsy‘Nword.’”Withinminutes, the black confederatereturned, followed by the experimenter, who askedeveryone to complete an initial survey, which in-cluded items assessing current affect. Next, theexperimenter asked the real participant to selectone of the confederates as a partner for a subse-quent anagram task and to report their choice orallyto the experimenter. Finally, all participants com-pleted the anagram task in another room with theperson they had selected. In the forecaster con-dition, participants were presented with a detaileddescription of the events that experiencers actuallyencountered. Forecasters were asked to predict inwriting how they would feel if they were in theexperiencer’s position and to predict which con-federate they would choose as a partner.

As shown in Fig. 1, forecasters in the extremeand moderate racist comment conditions antici-pated being more upset than forecasters in theno comment condition. Experiencers, however,

1Department of Psychology, York University, 4700 KeeleStreet, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3J 1P3. 2Department ofPsychology, University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall,Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V6T 1Z4. 3Departmentof Psychology, Yale University, 2 Hillhouse Avenue, Box208205, New Haven, CT 06520–8205, USA.

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:kawakami@yorku.ca

Fig. 1. Differences inemotional distress [on ascale from 1 (low distress)to 9 (high distress)] as afunction of role (forecast-ers versus experiencers)and comment (extremeracist versusmoderate rac-ist versus no comment).Error bars represent SEwith n = 19 to 21 partic-ipants in each condition.The predicted two-wayinteraction was signifi-cant (F2,117 = 7.55, P <0.001). Forecasters wereinfluenced by the type ofcomment (F2,57 = 26.62,P < 0.001), but experi-encers were not (F2,57 =1.86, P = 0.16). Simple effects analyses demonstrated that forecasters in the extreme and moderate racistcomment conditions anticipated being more upset than in the no comment condition [ts(38 and 37) = 5.68and 7.31, s < 0.001].

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reported little distress regardless of the type ofcomment. Likewise, as shown in Fig. 2, role andracist comment conditions influenced the choiceof task partner (22). Across the two racist commentconditions, a significant minority of forecasterspredicted choosing thewhite (17%) over the blackconfederate, whereas in the no comment condi-tion, forecasters showed a nonsignificant preferencefor the white (68%) over the black confederate.Experiencers were somewhat more likely tochoose thewhite (63%) over the black confederateacross the two racist comment conditions, but theydid not differ in their choice of the white (53%)versus black confederate in the no comment con-dition. Additional analyses further demonstratedthat, whereas experiencers were significantlymore likely to choose the white confederate thanforecasters predicted in the racist comment con-ditions, experiencers’ and forecasters’ choicesdid not differ in the absence of a racist comment.In sum, consistent with our hypotheses, forecast-ers substantially mispredicted the extent to whicha racist comment would provoke distress andsocial rejection.

As expected, distress was unrelated to partnerchoice in the no comment condition [correlationcoefficient r(36) = –0.24, P = 0.14]. However,participants who felt or expected to feel moredistress were less likely to choose or predictchoosing the white confederate in the moderateand extreme racist comment conditions [correla-tion coefficients rs(38 and 40) > –0.40, and Ps <0.01, respectively]. Furthermore, when role, distress,and their interaction were entered into a logisticregression predicting partner choice in the racistcomment conditions, the interaction did not ap-proach significance, logistic regression coefficientB(1, N = 82 participants) = –0.33, P = 0.47, sug-gesting that affect predicted partner choice in sim-ilar ways in both the forecaster and experiencerconditions.

We used standard mediational analysis pro-cedures to examine whether differences in fore-casted and experienced affect could statisticallyexplain the observed differences in forecastedand experienced partner choice (23). Specifically,when role and distress were entered into a logistic

regression predicting partner choice in the racistcomment conditions, the effect of role was elim-inated, whereas distress continued to predictpartner choice (22). Although these analyses donot prove causality, the results suggest thatpeople may erroneously believe that they wouldreject a racist in part because they overestimatethe emotional distress that a racist commentwould evoke.

One potential alternative interpretation for ourpartner choice findings is that experiencers’ re-sponses may have been driven by a motivationto avoid the black confederate because of con-cerns about how the black person might re-spond or feelings of guilt. However, because theblack confederate was unaware of the commentand because no differences in partner choicewerefound between the no comment and racist commentconditions, this explanation does not readily ac-count for the observed results. Furthermore, ad-ditional analyses revealed that feelings of guiltand embarrassment did not mediate the partic-ipants’ partner choice and that participants whofelt greater general distress after the commentwere more, not less, likely to choose the blackconfederate (22).

Even though the results from experiment1 directly supported our hypotheses, the fact thatexperiencers did not respond negatively to the rac-ist slur is counterintuitive. Consistent with manyother studies in the affective forecasting literature(24), forecasters received a full description of theevents that transpired, yet they were not presentedwith the events in the same vivid way as experi-encers. To remedy this situation, a second studyincluded a forecaster-video condition in whichparticipants were presented with a video showinga precise enactment of the experiencer conditionfrom the experiencers’ visual perspective.

In this study, 76 participants assigned to theexperiencer, forecaster-text, or forecaster-videoconditions were exposed to the moderate slur uti-lized in experiment 1. As predicted, after a racistcomment, participants in both the forecaster-textand forecaster-video conditions anticipated feelingmore emotional distress than experiencers reported[t(51) = 10.54, P < 0.001, and t(46) = 6.99, P <

0.001, respectively] (22). In addition, whereas aminority of participants predicted that theywouldchoose the white partner in both the forecaster-text (25%) and forecaster-video (17%) condi-tions,most experiencers actually preferred thewhite(71%) over the black confederate [c2(2, N = 73) =17.80, P < 0.001]. Replicating experiment 1, me-diational analyses suggested that experiencerswere less likely to reject the white partner thanforecasters anticipated because experiencers wereless upset after hearing a racist comment thanforecasters imagined.

Another possible difference between forecast-er and experiencer conditions is that forecastersmay not have perceived the racist situation to havebeen as real as experiencers who actually en-countered the event. Our paradigm, however, mir-rors standard affective forecasting procedures thathave shown similar forms ofmisprediction, regard-less of whether participants are presented with realor hypothetical events (14, 20, 25). Furthermore,this distinction does not explain why, in the presentresearch, forecasters were more distressed andinfluenced by the event than experiencers. Con-ceptually one would assume that the more “real”one perceives the situation, the more impact itwill have. Still, to address this issue empirically,we presented forecasters (N = 40) with the samemoderate slur video used in experiment 2. Forhalf of the participants, the video was describedas a real situation with actual students; for theother half, the video was described as a hypothet-ical situation with actors. Regardless of whetherthe situation was described as real or hypothetical,forecasters anticipated feeling highly distressedand only a minority predicted that they wouldchoose the white confederate as a partner (22).These findings replicate previous results and sug-gest that differences between forecasters and ex-periencers cannot readily be explained by thebelief that the situation is real or hypothetical.

Taken together, our findings reveal that people’spredictions regarding emotional distress and be-havior in response to a racial slur differ drasticallyfrom their actual reactions. Whereas participantswho imagined themselves in the situation antici-pated being very upset and distancing themselvesfrom a person who made a racist comment, thosewho experienced this event did not differ fromcontrol participants who were not exposed to aracist comment. Remarkably, this pattern of re-sults emerged even when the comment includeda racial slur widely regarded as one of the mostoffensive words in the English language (26).

Although previous experimental research hasprovided some evidence that targets of prejudicemay overestimate the anger they would exhibit inresponse to experiencing harassment (27, 28), thepresent research sheds light on anticipated andactual responses by individuals who are not partof the target group. Despite an impressive historyof social psychological research on intergrouprelations (2), theorists are just beginning to under-stand how lay people react to prejudice towardother groups. Investigating responses by majority

Fig. 2. Percentage ofparticipants who choosethe white racist partner asa function of role (forecast-ers versus experiencers)andcomment (extremerac-ist versus moderate racistversus no comment), withn = 19 to 21 participantsin each condition. A sig-nificant interaction wasfound between role andcomment conditions onchoice of task partner [lo-gistic regression coeffici-ent B(1, N = 120) = 3.48,P < 0.01].

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and other groups to overt prejudice against blacksmay be critical to understanding the continuedexistence of racism. Our research suggests that,although people anticipate feeling upset and takingaction upon witnessing a racist act against an out-group, they actually respond with indifference.The present findings also suggest a potential linkbetween affective and behavioral responses toracism (29) and complement current theorizingon the role of emotion in prejudice and discrim-ination (2, 30).

Because of the socially sensitive nature ofinvestigations related to reactions to racism, analternative explanation for the current findingsinvolves social evaluative concerns and demandcharacteristics. Participants in the role of forecastermight have readily recognized the social demandsdictated by widespread egalitarian norms andresponded inways that they believedwere sociallyor contextually acceptable rather than according totheir true inclinations. However, both experiencersand forecasters were assured of the anonymity oftheir affective responses (which then predictedpartner choice), and because partner selection wasmade publicly by experiencers but privately byforecasters, social evaluative concerns about ap-pearing racist should have made experiencersmore likely than forecasters to reject the whitepartner. Furthermore, additional analyses relatedto study 3 (22) showed that forecasters’ responseswere unrelated to individual differences in socialevaluative concerns.

It is also important to note that our resultsdovetail with previous research on less sociallysensitive issues that show that people commonlyoverlook their own ability to reconstrue bad sit-uations in the best possible light (14). In thepresent context, upon hearing a racist comment,participants may have actively reconstrued it as ajoke or harmless remark to stem the tide of neg-ative emotions. In addition, we posit that partic-ipants may have mispredicted their emotionalresponses to witnessing a racist comment becauseof their own ambivalent racial attitudes. Recent

research suggests that, although forecasters mayhave relied on their conscious egalitarian attitudeswhen predicting their future emotions, the actualemotions of experiencers may have been shapedmore by nonconscious negative attitudes (1, 10, 20).

Besides providing a conceptual contribution,the present studies also have immediate practicalrelevance. In particular, despite current egalitar-ian cultural norms and apparent good intentions,one reason why racism and discrimination re-main so prevalent in society may be that peopledo not respond to overt acts of racism in theway that they anticipate: They fail to censureothers who transgress these egalitarian norms.These findings provide important information onactual responses to racism that can help create per-sonal awareness and inform interventions, there-by helping people to be as egalitarian as theythink they will be.

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31. This research was supported by Social Science andHumanities Council of Canada grants to K.K. and E.D.

Supporting Online Materialwww.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/323/5911/276/DC1Materials and MethodsSOM TextReferences

21 August 2008; accepted 4 November 200810.1126/science.1164951

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