Resisting Prejudice Every Day: Exploring Women’s Assertive Responses to Anti-Black Racism, Anti-Semitism, Heterosexism, and Sexism

Abstract

Past lab and scenario research on sexism suggests that women are more likely to contemplate than to engage in assertive confrontation of prejudice. The present study was designed to explore how the competing cultural forces of activist norms and gender role prescriptions for women to be passive and accommodating may contribute to women's response strategies. Women were asked to keep diaries of incidents of anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism, heterosexism, and sexism, including why they responded, how they responded, and the consequences of their responses. Participants were about as likely to report they were motivated by activist goals as they were to report being motivated by gender role consistent goals to avoid conflict. Those with gender role-consistent goals were less likely to respond assertively. Participants were more likely to consider assertive responses (for 75% of incidents) than to actually make them (for 40% of incidents). Assertive responders did, however, report better outcomes on a variety of indicators of satisfaction and closure, at the expense of heightened interpersonal conflict. Results are discussed with respect to the personal and social implications of responding to interpersonal prejudice.

A psychologically “embedded” approach to designing games for prosocial causes

“…and rank, in order of likelihood, a set of five responses (which emerged in prior works by Czopp, Monteith, &Mark, 2006, andHyers, 2007). The nature of the options ranged from strong and assertive responses that directly negated the act of bias (e.g., explaining that girls are just as good at math) to unassertive responses that passively expressed disapproval (e.g., giving him a "dirty look") to trivializing responses that implied approval of the biased act (e.g., laughing along).…”

Everyday Confrontation of Discrimination: The Well-Being Costs and Benefits to Women over Time

“…The other sub-scales were not included as they either appeared too irrelevant (e.g., attentive) or, extreme (jovial) in response to discrimination, or, included specific descriptors that the young participants would not likely use and as such, not ecologically valid (e.g., "scornful"). Moreover, the sub-scales chosen have also been noted as typical moods reported when experiencing discrimination (Hyers, 2007;Swim, et al, (2003). Participants rated each adjective in terms of how they felt "today" (very slightly or not at all (1) to extremely (5)).…”

“…Nonverbal behaviours Interrater reliability for these codes was good (Cohen's Kappa = .89, p = .0001). Although past works differs in how these actions are labeled into higher level categories (e.g., both verbal and nonverbal confrontations have been grouped as 'assertive confrontations', Hyers, 2007;Shelton, Richeson, Salvatore & Hill, 2006), the specific confrontation types (anger, education and indirect) have been documented in past work (e.g., Hyers, 2007Hyers, , 2010Swim et al, 2001).…”

“…Diary research (Brinkman & Rickard, 2009;Foster, 2009;Hyers, 2007Hyers, , 2010Swim, Hyers, Cohen & Ferguson, 2001;Swim, Hyers, Cohen, Fitzgerald & Bylsma, 2003) has shown that women's daily experiences of both sexism and racism include negative comments/stereotyping by family and romantic partners, being excluded, and sexual objectification (Brinkman & Rickard, 2009;Foster, 2009;Hyers, 2007Hyers, , 2010Swim, et al, 2001;Swim, et al, 2003). Although such experiences may at first glance, seem more benign than institutional threats, these studies also reveal the chronic and repetitive nature of everyday discrimination: on average it occurs one to three times per week (Hyers, 2007;Foster, 2009;Swim et al, 2001) and as often as one (Swim et al, 2001, Study 3) to two times per day (Brinkman & Rickard, 2009). Thus, akin to the negative effects of daily hassles (Kanner, Coyne, Schaefer & Lazarus, 1981), the ubiquitous nature of everyday discrimination suggests that everyday confrontations may have negative consequences for women's well-being.…”

“…For example, the instructions given to participants in Wei et al's (2010) study do not clarify whether confrontations were recalled from a behavioral repertoire that women actually used or whether they study was measuring anticipated confrontations in response to hypothetical discrimination (i.e., what would they would use). Finally, the few diary studies that have documented everyday confrontations have not examined well-being (Hyers, 2007(Hyers, , 2010Swim et al, 2003). Thus, one goal of this study was to use a daily diary methodology to assess women's everyday confrontations of discrimination, and their effects on well-being.…”