Only people with internalized nonprejudiced standards feel guilt over their actual prejudiced responses

Evidence

When actual responses were discrepant from people’s personal standards, Devine et al. (1991) found that low-prejudice people experienced compunction but high-prejudice people did not. Moreover, the greater the violation of nonprejudiced standards, the more guilt low-prejudice people reported. For low-prejudice people, then, the conflict between their should and would reactions threatens their nonprejudiced self-concepts and they hold themselves personally accountable for these failures. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2106

Monteith, Devine, and Zuwerink (1993) found that high prejudice individuals felt less guilt than low prejudice individuals when they thought they would engage in prejudicial behavior. The reason for the discrepancy is that low prejudice individuals hold a personal standard for nonprejudiced behavior, whereas high prejudice individuals believe they should not act on prejudice because others think they should not. Barkan (2000) suggests this type of emotional reaction to perceived injustice may also occur at the collective level because liberal societies expect justice and tend to feel guilt when unjust policies implemented by past generations come to light. — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 444

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger) and to Allport’s original claim about compunction that this chapter operationalizes and tests. — connects to: Strongly identified group members resist collective guilt more than weakly identified ones. — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 451; Guilt over prejudice arises only in people who internalize egalitarian standards; Guilt from prejudice-standards violation occurs only in people committed to nonprejudiced values — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 2104 (+7 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2106; Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 444

Broader Connections

• Low-prejudice people experience compunction when their behavior contradicts their egalitarian standards #corroborates (0.98)
• Low-prejudice whites feel guilt when their behavior violates egalitarian norms. #corroborates (0.97)
• Guilt over prejudice arises only in people who internalize egalitarian standards #corroborates (0.95)
• Guilt from prejudice-standards violation occurs only in people committed to nonprejudiced values #corroborates (0.92) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2104
• Low-prejudice people feel compunction over mismatches between how they should and would react #expands (0.90)
• Sincere egalitarians feel personal accountability for their own prejudiced responses #expands (0.90) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2115
• Internalized fairness values make group prejudice psychologically intolerable as hypocrisy #corroborates (0.88) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2081
• Recognizing one’s own prejudice triggers guilt that motivates prejudice reduction #expands (0.82) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2082
• The decent middle’s prejudice is conscious moral unease, not unconscious bias #corroborates (0.80) — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 36