Standing up for whom? Targets’ different goals in the confrontation of discrimination

Abstract

AbstractWe challenge the common interpretation of targets’ immediate confrontation in reaction to discrimination as self‐serving behavior and propose different underlying motivations for this phenomenon. In five online scenario studies (Noverall = 1,447), we demonstrate across different samples and contexts that targets indicate a distinct pursuit of the following self‐reported confrontation goals: individual‐benefit (e.g., perpetrator apologizes); group‐benefit (e.g., prejudice reduction); and distancing (e.g., demonstrating that one is different from typical group members). Furthermore, meaningful associations of the pursuits of individual‐benefitting goals and group‐benefitting goals with group identification, disidentification, and further collective action intentions indicate that they represent different confrontation motivations: Individual‐benefitting confrontation serves to cope with the individual mistreatment of discrimination, whereas group‐benefitting confrontation represents a form of collective action. Distancing goals were associated with disidentification and—unexpectedly—group identification. Our results show that the phenomenon of confrontation in reaction to discrimination can be the result of different underlying psychological processes.