The role of psychological inflexibility and perspective taking in anti-racism and anti-sexism

Abstract

Racism and sexism are pervasive forms of discrimination that cause significant individual and societal burden. Understanding manipulable psychological processes that contribute to these modes of discrimination would aid in developing anti-prejudice interventions that target them. Psychological flexibility has been proposed as a potential tool in combating prejudice by modifying one's relationship with unwanted or automatic prejudicial thoughts, in addition to the ability to take the perspective of marginalized groups. A survey assessing psychological inflexibility and perspective taking along with anti-racist/anti-sexist attitudes and behaviors was administered to a sample of 395 undergraduate students. Perspective taking predicted antiracist/anti-sexist behaviors above and beyond their corresponding attitudes. Psychological inflexibility was a not a significant predictor of relevant attitudes or behaviors. Our findings suggest that perspective taking may be an important target of anti-prejudice interventions.

Effects of Perspective Taking and Values Consistency in Reducing Implicit Racial Bias

“…In sum, as hypothesized, participants in the experimental group demonstrated a decreased level of pro-White bias after exposure to the values clarification and perspective taking intervention package thus supporting previous research that perspective taking, and values consistency are promising interventions for racism (Banks et al, 2021;Cohen et al, 2006;Davis et al, 2021;Todd et al, 2011;Todd et al, 2012).…”

“…Matsuda et al (2020) argued that biases are often difficult to change because they represent a lengthy learning history that often interferes with an individual's ability to form new relations. Based on the results of the current study, an intervention package that includes even limited exposure to a portion of values consistency and perspective taking skills can have an effect on implicit racial bias (Cohen et al, 2006;Davis et al, 2021;Kanter et al, 2020;Lillis & Hayes, 2007;West et al, 2017).…”

“…Psychological flexibility is composed of six interdependent skills, they are commonly known as defusion, acceptance, present moment attention, self-as-context, values, and committed actions (Hayes et al, 2011;Tarbox et al, 2022). Prior studies have indicated that perspective taking predicts anti-racist/anti-sexist behaviors across multiple domains (Davis et al, 2021). In laboratory-based studies, researchers have also shown that teaching perspective taking skills, for example, taking the perspective of another individual, produced a more positive interracial evaluation, increased awareness of racial inequality, and more approach-oriented behaviors toward a Black confederate (Todd et al, 2011;Todd et al, 2012).…”

Coping with online racism: Patterns of online social support seeking and anti-racism advocacy associated with online racism, and correlates of ethnic-racial socialization, perceived health, and alcohol use severity

“…Participants rated the items on a five-point Likert-type scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree), with higher scores indicating greater advocacy. ARBI was negatively related to color-blind racial attitudes and positively with the receptivity to cultural diversity [38] and showed adequate internal consistency estimate (.86) in a diverse racial/ethnic sample [39]. The Cronbach's alpha for the total score in this study was .89.…”

Validation of the Music Empathizing inventory in China

“…The current authors considered that relative to externalizing interpersonal empathy (e.g., EQ), males could feel less criticized/self-criticized as losing mannish (i.e., the symbol of authority in male-centered societies) for exhibiting music empathy (i.e., ME). Consequently, it may be sensible to adopt music training to help individuals with empathizing issues (e.g., racists, sexists, and sexual offenders; C. H. Davis et al, 2021;Varker & Devilly, 2007) to lift their empathy without "hurting" their dominant-cohort identities (e.g., ethnocentrism and masculism). The above proposal is in line with some scholars who promote music as the best "weapon" in the battle against of anti-racism (Rastas & Seye, 2019).…”