Prejudice level determines who experiences guilt versus mere discomfort from should-would discrepancies

Evidence

Bardis (1972) found a tendency for higher White guilt scores to be related to greater willingness to admit Blacks to colleges and to offer Blacks employment. In addition, Devine et al. (1991) and Monteith (1996) illustrated that prejudice moderated the extent to which people experienced guilt about their own discriminatory actions. They measured the affective consequences associated with the discrepancies concerning how participants felt they should respond to a member of a target group (Blacks or gays) and how they actually would respond to a member of the target group in contact situations. They showed that high and low prejudiced participants experienced different affective consequences from their should-would discrepancies. Low prejudice participants with large should-would discrepancies experienced compunction or guilt. High prejudice participants with large should-would discrepancies experienced only global discomfort (e.g., frustrated, tense, and anxious feelings) and did not experience compunction. — Janet K. Swim and Deborah L. Miller, White Guilt, 34

Categorization

• XREF: Directly speaks to the reader’s question: high-prejudice (dominant, glorifying) Whites respond to group-relevant discrepancy with anxiety/discomfort, not collective guilt — a boundary on the guilt-induction strategy. — connects to: Greater prejudice predicts lower collective guilt via justifiability construals — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 453; Prejudiced individuals commonly report compunction alongside their expressed prejudice — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 691; Low-prejudice people feel compunction over mismatches between how they should and would react (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Low-prejudice people feel compunction over mismatches between how they should and would react #expands (0.95)
• Low-prejudice people experience compunction when their behavior contradicts their egalitarian standards #expands (0.95)