The construct White guilt is typically motivated by the recognition of unearned and unfair racial privileges, the acknowledgement of personal racist attitudes or behavior, and/or the sense of responsibility for others’ racist attitudes or behavior. Empirical and conceptual work suggests mixed consequences of White guilt: it may correspond with antiracist attitudes and behavior, but it may also motivate defensiveness and disengagement. We addressed weaknesses in existing psychometric tools used to measure White guilt by synthesizing approaches from the literature on White racial emotions and self-conscious affect, and by attempting to distinguish between White guilt and shame. The results of Study 1 yielded a three-factor structure of White Guilt, Negation, and White Shame, and provided initial support for construct validity. In Study 2, a confirmatory factor analysis provided mixed support for a three-factor structure. In Study 3, our results suggest test-retest reliability over two weeks.
AhmedS. (2004). The cultural politics of emotion. New York: Routledge.
2.
AncisJ. R.SzymanskiD. M. (2001). Awareness of White privilege among White counseling trainees. The Counseling Psychologist, 29, 548–569. doi:10.1177/0011000001294005
3.
BanksA. J.ValentinoN. A. (2012). Emotional substrates of White racial attitudes. American Journal of Political Science, 56, 286–297. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00561.x
4.
Benetti-McQuoidJ.BursikK. (2005). Individual differences in experiences of and responses to guilt and shame: Examining the lenses of gender and gender role. Sex Roles, 53, 133–142. doi:10.1007/s11199-005-4287-4
5.
CohenJ. (1992). A power primer. Psychological Bulletin, 112, 155–159. doi: 0.1037//0033-2909.112.1.155
6.
CvetkovichA. (2012). Depression: A public feeling. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
7.
DelgadoR.StefancicJ. (2017). Critical race theory: An introduction (3rd ed.). New York, NY: NYU Press.
8.
DeVellisR. F. (2003). Scale development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
9.
DevineP. G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 5–18. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.56.1.5
10.
DiAngeloR. (2018). White fragility: Why it’s so hard for White people to talk about racism. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
11.
DoosjeB.BranscombeN. R.SpearsR.MansteadA. S. R. (1998). Guilt by association: When one’s group has a negative history. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 872–886. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.75.4.872
12.
EstradaF.MatthewsG. (2016). Perceived culpability in critical multicultural education: Understanding and responding to race informed guilt and shame to further learning outcomes among White American college students. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 28(3), 314–325.
13.
FeaginJ. R. (2013). The white racial frame: Centuries of racial framing and counter framing (2nd ed.) New York and London: Routledge.
14.
FinnS. E.FischerC. T.HandlerL. (2012). Collaborative/therapeutic assessment: A casebook and guide. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
15.
FowlerF. J.Jr. (1995). Improving survey questions: Design and evaluation. Applied Social Research Methods Series (38). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
16.
FrankenbergR. (1993). The social construction of whiteness: White women, race matters. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
17.
GarriottP.O.ReiterS.BrownfieldJ. (2015). Testing the efficacy of brief multicultural education interventions in white college students. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 9(2), 158–169. doi: 10.1037/a0039547
18.
Gonzalez Van CleveN. (2016). Crook county: Racism and injustice in America’s largest criminal court. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
19.
GrzankaP. R.AdlerJ.BlazerJ. (2015). Making up allies: The identity choreography of straight LGBT activism. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 12, 165–181. doi:10.1007/s13178-014-0179-0
20.
GrzankaP. R.FassingerR. E. (2009, August). Validating a psychometric test of white guilt and white shame. Poster session presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Canada.
21.
GrzankaP. R.MaherJ. T. (2012). Different, like everyone else: Stuff White People Like and the marketplace of diversity. Symbolic Interaction, 35, 368–393. doi:10.1002/symb.24
22.
HancockA.-M. (2004). The politics of disgust: The public identity of the welfare queen. New York: New York University Press.
23.
HelmsJ. E. (1990). Black and white racial identity: Theory, research and practice. New York: Greenwood Press.
24.
HuL. T.BentlerP. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6, 1–55. doi: 10.1080/10705519909540118
25.
IoanideP. (2015). The emotional politics of racism: How feelings trump facts in an era of colorblindness. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
26.
IyerA.LeachC. W.CrosbyF. J. (2003). White guilt and racial compensation: The benefits and limits of self-focus. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 117–129. doi:10.1177/0146167202238377
27.
LaiK.GreenS. B. (2016). The problem with having two watches: Assessment of fit when RMSEA and CFI disagree. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 51(2-3), 220–239. doi:10.1080/00273171.2015.1134306
28.
LeachC. W.IyerA.PedersenA. (2006). Anger and guilt about ingroup advantage explain the willingness for political action. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 1232–1245. doi:10.1177/0146167206289729
29.
LewisH. B. (1971). Shame and guilt in neurosis. New York, New York: International Universities Press, Inc.
30.
LewisJ. A.MendenhallR.HarwoodS. A.HunttM. B. (2016). “Ain’t I a Woman?” Perceived gendered racial microaggressions experienced by Black women. The Counseling Psychologist, 44, 758–780. doi:10.1177/00110000016641193
31.
LipsitzG. (2006). The possessive investment in Whiteness: How white people profit from identity politics (2nd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
32.
McCallL. (2005). The complexity of intersectionality. Signs: The Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30, 1711–1800. doi:10.1086/426800
33.
McConahayJ. B. (1986). Modern racism, ambivalence, and the Modern Racism Scale. In DovidioJ. F.GaertnerS. L. (Eds.), Prejudice, discrimination and racism (pp. 91–125). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
34.
MilesJ. R.MullerJ. T.ArnettJ. E.IIIBournJ. R.JohnsonM. C.RecabarrenD. (2015). Group member affect and session evaluations in intergroup dialogue. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 19, 225–242. doi:10.1037/gdn0000032
35.
MuellerR. O.HancockG. R. (2008). Best practices in structural equation modeling. In OsborneJ. (Ed.), Best practices in quantitative methods (pp. 488–508). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
NevilleH. A.AwadG. H.BrooksJ. E.FloresM. P.BluemelJ. (2013). Color-blind racial ideology: Theory training, and measurement implications in psychology. American Psychologist, 68, 455–466. doi:10.1037/a0033282
38.
NevilleH. A.LillyR.DuranG.LeeR.BrowneL. (2000). Construction and initial validation of the Color-Blindness Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS). Journal of Counseling Psychology, 47, 59–70. doi:10.1037//0022-0167.47.1.59
39.
NiedenthalP. M.TangneyJ. P.GavanskiI. (1994). “If only I weren’t” versus “If only I hadn’t”: Distinguishing shame and guilt in counterfactual thinking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 585–595. doi:0022-3514/94
40.
OmiM.WinantH. (2014). Racial formation in the United States (3rd ed.). New York and London: Routledge.
41.
RizviS. L. (2010). Development and preliminary validation of a new measure to assess shame: The Shame Inventory. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 32, 438–447. doi:10.1007/s10862-009-9172-y
42.
RoedigerD. R. (2007). The wages of whiteness: Race and the making of the American working class (3nd Ed.). London: Verso.
43.
SaucierD. A.MillerC. T. (2003). The persuasiveness of arguments as a subtle measure of racism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 1303–1315. doi: 0.1177/0146167203254612
44.
SpaniermanL. B.BeardJ. C.ToddN. R. (2012). White men’s fears, White women’s tears: Examining gender differences in racial affect types. Sex Roles, 67, 174–186. doi:10.1007/s11199-012-0162-2
45.
SpaniermanL. B.CabreraN. L. (2015). The emotions of White racism and antiracism. In WatsonV.Howard-WagnerD.SpaniermanL. (Eds.), Unveiling Whiteness in the twenty-first century: Global manifestations, transdisciplinary interventions, (pp. 9–28). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
46.
SpaniermanL. B.HeppnerM. J. (2004). Psychosocial costs of racism to Whites scale (PCRW): Construction and initial validation. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 51, 249–262. doi:10.1037/0022-0167.51.2.249
47.
SpaniermanL. B.PoteatV. P.WhittakerV. A.SchlosserL. Z.AvalosM. R. A. (2017). Allies for life? Lessons from white scholars of multicultural psychology. The Counseling Psychologist, 45, 618–650. doi:10.1177/0011000017719459
48.
SpaniermanL. B.ToddN. R.AndersonC. J. (2009). Psychosocial costs of racism to Whites: Understanding patterns among university students. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 56, 239–252. doi:10.1037/a0015432
49.
SwimJ. K.MillerD. L. (1999). White guilt: Its antecedents and consequences for attitudes toward affirmative action. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24, 500–514. doi:10.1177/0146167299025004008
50.
TangneyJ.P. (1993). Shame and guilt. In CostelloC.G. (Ed.), Symptoms of depression (pp. 161–180). New York, New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
51.
TangneyJ. P.DearingR. L. (2002). Shame and guilt. New York: The Guilford Press.
52.
TangneyJ. P.StuewigJ.MashekD. J. (2007). What’s moral about self-conscious emotions? In TracyJ. L.RobinsR. W.TangneyJ. P. (Eds.) The self-conscious emotions: Theory and research (pp. 21–37). New York: The Guilford Press.
53.
TangneyJ. P.WagnerP. E.Hill-BarlowD.MarschallD. E.GramzowR. (1996). Relation of shame and guilt to constructive versus destructive responses to anger across the lifespan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 797–809. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.70.4.797
54.
TatumB. D. (1992). Talking about race, learning about racism: The application of racial identity development theory in the classroom. Harvard Educational Review, 62, 1–24. doi:10.17763/haer.62.1.146k5v980r703023
55.
ToddN. R.SpaniermanL. B.PoteatV. P. (2011). Longitudinal examination of the psychosocial costs of racism to Whites across the college experience. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 58, 508–521. doi:10.1037/a0025066
56.
TracyJ. L.RobinsR. W.TangneyJ. P. (Eds.) (2007). The self-conscious emotions: Theory and research. New York: The Guilford Press.
57.
WorthingtonR. L.WhittakerT. A. (2006). Scale development research: A content analysis and recommendations for best practices. The Counseling Psychologist, 34, 806–838. doi:10.1177/0011000006288127
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
