Appraisal of male privilege: On the dual role of identity threat and shame in response to confrontations with male privilege

Abstract

Interventions that confront men with male privilege can threaten their social identity. Past research on White privilege confrontations has suggested group-image threat is a positive predictor of positive privilege attitudes. However, research on emotional appraisals of ingroup transgressions demonstrates that feelings of shame elicited by the ingroup's negative image lead to less constructive responses while feelings of shame elicited by the ingroup's moral failure motivate more positive reactions. To reconcile these different predictions, we examined how relevant dimensions of threat (to the ingroup's image or to moral values of the group) and subsequent experiences of shame (image shame, moral shame) affect men's privilege attitudes in response to male privilege confrontations. Across three preregistered experiments (N = 1463 men), we found that male confronters were evaluated more positively, which was explained through lower levels of image concerns toward male confronters. We also found evidence that morality concerns are related to more positive responses. Although the total effects on privilege attitudes were small, our findings highlight the importance for future research and practice to distinguish between the positive effects of moral threat through moral shame and the negative effects of group-image threat through image shame in privilege interventions.