Is Affirmation the Cure? Self-Affirmation and European-Americans’ Perception of Systemic Racism

Abstract

Racial-ethnic gaps in perception of racism are persistent in the United States, perhaps because the acknowledgement of racism is threatening to European Americans. Supporting this argument, preliminary research indicates that self-affirmation boosts European Americans’ perception of racism and reduces the gap between European and Hispanic Americans’ perception of racism. Although promising, these studies were limited by relatively low statistical power and no subsequent studies have assessed their robustness. We conducted 3 pre-registered experiments testing the effect of self-affirmation on perception of racism. Surprisingly, self-affirmation failed to increase European Americans’ perception of racism (Study 1–3). Further, self-affirmation failed to reduce the gap between European and African Americans’ perception of racism (Study 3). Our results challenge the notion that self-affirmation reliably alters perception of racism. Discussion highlights methodological, cultural, and historical differences between studies that may explain discrepancies in results.