Through a phone-based field experiment, I investigated the effect of mental help seekers' race, class, and gender on the accessibility of psychotherapists. Three hundred and twenty psychotherapists each received voicemail messages from one black middle-class and one white middle-class help seeker, or from one black working-class and one white working-class help seeker, requesting an appointment. The results revealed an otherwise invisible form of discrimination. Middle-class help seekers had appointment offer rates almost three times higher than their working-class counterparts. Race differences emerged only among middle-class help-seekers, with blacks considerably less likely than whites to be offered an appointment. Average appointment offer rates were equivalent across gender, but women were favored over men for appointment offers in their preferred time range.

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Two field experiments investigated discrimination in an online mental health care market. The subjects were 908 mental health care providers (MHPs) who advertise for clients on a website through which help-seekers email providers. Both studies measured MHPs’ receptiveness to an ostensibly black or white help-seeker requesting an appointment. In the first study, no racial or gender disparities were observed. However, help-seekers in the second study, who signaled lower education than those in the first, were confronted with significantly lower accessibility overall. Moreover, black help-seekers with low education and high social need (i.e., a caseworker) received significantly fewer positive responses than any other group. Although the two studies are not directly comparable, their results suggest a hierarchy of accessibility: MHPs prefer more educated help-seekers over less educated ones and among those less educated prefer black help-seekers with a caseworker the least. These disparities persist after controlling for MHPs’ sociodemographic and financial characteristics.

The Protestant work ethic (PWE), the belief that hard work leads to success, is a quintessentially American belief. The present research addresses a critical gap in psychological research on PWE: can a single, large‐scale sociopolitical event (government's response to Hurricane Katrina) produce changes in PWE? We review evidence showing that the salience of Katrina led to a reduction in African Americans' (not European Americans') endorsement of PWE and that this result appears explained by African Americans' greater belief in the government's inadequate response to Katrina victims, who were predominately African American. The implications of differential endorsement of PWE for future expectations of societal treatment, motivation to pursue important goals, and willingness to endorse structural corrections of inequality are discussed.