The egalitarian optimist and the confrontation of prejudice

Abstract

Standing up against prejudice often requires one to surmount powerful inter- and intra-individual forces. Egalitarian standards alone are often insufficient to surmount these forces. As individuals high in dispositional optimism vigorously pursue valued goals, even when threatened with obstacles, we propose that the combination of high optimism and salient egalitarian goals predicts the confrontation of prejudice. In the present study, individuals high and low in both optimism and prejudice were randomly assigned to hear a racist joke followed by an argument, or to hear the same joke but without the argument. We found that low-prejudice optimists who had their chronic egalitarian values made salient by hearing the argument were highly likely to confront a later act of prejudice. Self-report data closely mirrored this behavioral finding. These findings support a self-regulatory approach to confrontation and suggest new avenues for combating prejudice.