This investigation reports on the development and initial validation of the Psychosocial Costs of Racism to Whites Scale (PCRW), which operationalizes the idea that racism has a host of psychosocial costs for White individuals. Data from 727 participants were collected in 3 interrelated studies that subjected the items to the rigors of both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Exploratory factor analysis results suggested a 16-item scale with 3 factors as follows: (a) White Empathic Reactions Toward Racism, (b) White Guilt, and (c) White Fear of Others. Results also indicated that participant responses were not simply reflections of socially desirable responding. Confirmatory factor analysis suggested that the 3-factor model was a good fit for the data. Estimates of internal consistency, temporal stability, and construct validity are provided.

The authors examined the association between color-blind racial ideology and self-reported multicultural counseling competencies in 130 applied psychology students and mental health workers. Results from 1 sample (n = 79) indicated that greater levels of color-blind racial ideology as measured by the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (Neville, Lilly, Duran, Lee, & Browne, 2000) were (1) related to lower self-reported multicultural counseling awareness and knowledge as measured by the Multicultural Counseling Knowledge and Awareness Scale (MCKAS; Ponterotto, Gretchen, Utsey, Rieger, & Austin, 2002) and (2) accounted for a significant amount of variance in MCKAS scores over and above that explained by self-reported multicultural training, social desirability, and participant race. Findings from another sample also provided empirical support for the link between higher color-blind racial ideology and lower multicultural case conceptualization ability (n = 51), after controlling for the influence of the number of multicultural course(s) taken. Implications of the findings and future directions are provided.

In this article, the authors describe 3 interrelated investigations among White undergraduate and graduate students that document the development and initial validation of the White Privilege Attitudes Scale (WPAS). The WPAS assesses the multidimensional nature of White privilege attitudes, reflecting affective, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions. In Study 1 (n ϭ 250), exploratory factor analysis suggested a 28-item scale with 4 factors as follows: (a) Willingness to Confront White Privilege, (b) Anticipated Costs of Addressing White Privilege, (c) White Privilege Awareness, and (d) White Privilege Remorse. In Study 2 (n ϭ 251), confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the 4-factor model was a better fit of the data compared with competing models. The authors also found support for convergent validity between scores on the WPAS factors and theoretically related measures. Study 3 (n ϭ 40) documented test-retest reliability of each of the WPAS factors and nonsignificant associations with socially desirable responding. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

This mixed methods study examined social justice commitments of counseling psychology graduate trainees. In the quantitative portion of the study, a national sample of trainees (n = 260) completed a web-based survey assessing their commitments to social justice and related personal and training variables. Results suggested that students desired greater social justice training than what they experienced in their programs. In the qualitative portion, we used a phenomenological approach to expand and elaborate upon quantitative results. A subsample (n = 7) of trainees who identified as strong social justice activists were interviewed regarding their personal, professional, and training experiences. Eleven themes related to participants' meanings of and experiences with social justice emerged within 4 broad categories: nature of social justice, motivation for activism, role of training, and personal and professional integration. Thematic findings as well as descriptive statistics informed the selection and ordering of variables in a hierarchical regression analysis that examined predictors of social justice commitment. Results indicated that trainees' perceptions of training environment significantly predicted their social justice commitment over and above their general activist orientation and spirituality. Findings are discussed collectively, and implications for training and future research are provided.

Participants (230 White college students) completed the Psychosocial Costs of Racism to Whites (PCRW) Scale. Using cluster analysis, we identified 5 distinct cluster groups on the basis of PCRW subscale scores: the unempathic and unaware cluster contained the lowest empathy scores; the insensitive and afraid cluster consisted of low empathy and guilt scores, with the highest score on fear; the fearful guilt cluster exhibited elevations on guilt and fear; the empathic but unaccountable cluster reflected high empathy with low guilt and fear; and the informed empathy and guilt cluster represented those high on empathy and guilt in conjunction with low levels of fear. Groups were validated on an additional sample (n ϭ 366) and were found to differ significantly on theoretically related measures.