Racial minorities living in U.S. society hold fewer privileges in day-to-day life than those in the racial majority. Some propose that the shared experience of a lack of racial privilege among minorities may promote increased empathy for people of other ethnicities and cultures, although there is a lack of evidence demonstrating this empirically. In this study, we examine the intersection of racial privilege and ethnocultural empathy in a diverse sample (N = 404) of U.S. residents recruited using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Results indicated statistically significant differences in racial privilege and ethnocultural empathy between racial groups such that White participants had higher levels of racial privilege than racial minority participants and lower levels of ethnocultural empathy than Black participants. Results further suggested that the difference in ethnocultural empathy between White and Black participants remained even after racial privilege was controlled for statistically. These results integrate and advance research on the intersection between racial privilege on ethnocultural empathy.
AlbieroP.MatricardiG. (2013). Empathy towards people of different race and ethnicity: Further empirical evidence for the scale of ethnocultural empathy. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 37(5), 648–655. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2013.05.003
2.
AlexanderM. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. The New Press.
3.
AllportG. W. (1937). Personality: A psychological interpretation. Henry Holt.
4.
AllportG. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Addison-Wesley.
5.
BetancourtM. (2017). A conceptual introduction to Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (arXiv preprint arXiv:1701.02434). https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.02434
6.
BlackL. L.StoneD. A.HutchinsonS. R.SuarezE. C. (2007). The development and validation of the Social Privilege Measure. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 40(1), 16–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481756.2007.11909803
7.
BrockieT. N.Dana-SaccoG.WallenG. R.WilcoxH. C.CampbellJ. C. (2015). The relationship of adverse childhood experiences to PTSD, depression, poly-drug use and suicide attempt in reservation-based Native American adolescents and young adults. American Journal of Community Psychology, 55(3–4), 411–421. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-015-9721-3
8.
BuhlerC. (1971). Basic theoretical concepts of humanistic psychology. American Psychologist, 26(4), 378–386. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0032049
9.
BuhrmesterM.KwangT.GoslingS. D. (2011). Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: A new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data?Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(1), 3–5. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691610393980
10.
CarlsonR. A. (1975). The quest for conformity: Americanization through education (Vol. 10). John Wiley.
CoatesT. (2015). Between the world and me. Spiegel & Grau.
13.
CobbC. L.XieD.MecaA.SchwartzS. J. (2017). Acculturation, discrimination, and depression among unauthorized Latinos/as in the United States. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 23(2), 258–268. https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000118
CortlandC. I.CraigM. A.ShapiroJ. R.RichesonJ. A.NeelR.GoldsteinN. J. (2017). Solidarity through shared disadvantage: Highlighting shared experiences of discrimination improves relations between stigmatized groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(4), 547–567. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000100.supp
16.
DagaS. S.RavalV. V. (2018). Ethnic–racial socialization, model minority experience, and psychological functioning among south Asian American emerging adults: A preliminary mixed-methods study. Asian American Journal of Psychology, 9(1), 17–31. https://doi.org/10.1037/aap0000108
17.
DeRobertisE. M. (2015). Toward a humanistic-multicultural model of development. In SchneiderK. J.PiersonJ. F.BugentalJ. F. T. (Eds.), The handbook of humanistic psychology: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 227–242). SAGE.
18.
DiAngeloR. (2018). White fragility: Why it’s so hard for White people to talk about racism. Beacon Press.
19.
Du BoisW. E. B. (1903). The souls of black folk. A.C. McClurg.
20.
EltisD. (1993). Europeans and the rise and fall of African slavery in the Americas: An interpretation. American Historical Review, 98(5), 1399–1423. http://doi.org/10.2307/2167060
21.
GoldS. J. (2004). From Jim Crow to racial hegemony: Evolving explanations of racial hierarchy. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 27(6), 951–968. https://doi.org/10.1080/0141987042000268549
22.
Gonzalez-SobrinoB.HugheyM. W. (2015). White race discourse: Preserving racial privilege in a post-racial society. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(3), 493–495. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2014.928341
23.
GoodrichB.GabryJ.AliI.BrillemanS. (2018). rstanarm: Bayesian applied regression modeling via Stan. https://mc-stan.org/
24.
HarrisonM. S.ThomasK. M. (2009). The hidden prejudice in selection: A research investigation on skin tone bias. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 39(1), 134–168. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00433.x
HoffmanL. (2016). Multiculturalism and humanistic psychology: From neglect to epistemological and ontological diversity. The Humanistic Psychologist, 44(1), 56–71. https://doi.org/10.1037/hum0000016
27.
HoffmanL.Cleare-HoffmanH.JacksonT. (2015). Humanistic psychology and multiculturalism: History, current status, and advancements. In SchneiderK. J.PiersonJ. F.BugentalJ. F. T. (Eds.), The handbook of humanistic psychology: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 41–56). SAGE.
28.
HowardG. S. (2019). The present and future of methodology and statistics in psychology. The Humanistic Psychologist, 47(1), 26–51. https://doi.org/10.1037/hum0000111
KassR. E.RafteryA. E. (1995). Bayes factors. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 90(430), 773–795.
32.
KaufmanS. B. (2020). Transcend: The new science of self-actualization. Random House.
33.
KaufmanS. B.YadenD. B.HydeE.TsukayamaE. (2019). The light vs. dark triad of personality: Contrasting two very different profiles of human nature. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, Article 467. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00467
34.
KendiI. X. (2016). Stamped from the beginning: The definitive history of racist ideas in America. Bold Type Books.
35.
KiangL.WitkowM.ThompsonT. (2016). Model minority stereotyping, perceived discrimination, and adjustment among adolescents from Asian American backgrounds. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 45(7), 1366–1379. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-015-0336-7
36.
KruschkeJ. K. (2013). Bayesian estimation supersedes the t test. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(2), 573–603. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029146
LuY.HillC. E.HancockG. R.KeumB. T. (2020). The effectiveness of helping skills training for undergraduate students: Changes in ethnocultural empathy. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 67(1), 14–24. https://doi-org.proxy.bsu.edu/10.1037/cou0000404
39.
MaslowA. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. Harper & Row.
40.
MaslowA. H. (1968). Toward a psychology of being (2nd ed.). Van Nostrand Reinhold.
41.
MazzoccoP. J.BrockT. C.BrockG. J.OlsonK. R.BanajiM. R. (2006). The cost of being black: White Americans’ perceptions and the question of reparations. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 3(2), 261–297.
42.
McIntoshP. (1988a). White and male privilege: A personal accounting of coming to see correspondences through work in women’s studies. In AndersonM. L.CollinsP. H. (Eds.), Race, class, and gender: An anthology (pp. 76–87). Wadsworth.
43.
McIntoshP. (1988b). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. In McGoldrickM. (Ed.), Re-visioning family therapy: Race, gender and culture in clinical practice (pp. 146–152). Guilford Press.
NagataD. K. (1990). The Japanese-American internment: Perceptions of moral community, fairness, and redress. Journal of Social Issues, 46(1), 133–146. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1990.tb00277.x
PaolacciG.ChandlerJ. (2014). Inside the Turk: Understanding Mechanical Turk as a participant pool. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(3), 184–188. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721414531598
49.
ParkJ.HaslamN.KashimaY.NorasakkunkitV. (2016). Empathy, culture and self-humanising: Empathising reduces the attribution of greater humanness to the self more in Japan than Australia. International Journal of Psychology, 51(4), 301–306. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12164
50.
PeiferJ. S.LawrenceE. C.WilliamsJ. L.Leyton-ArmakanJ. (2016). The culture of mentoring: Ethnocultural empathy and ethnic identity in mentoring for minority girls. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 22(3), 440–446. https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000078
51.
PesterD. A.LenzA. S.WatsonJ. C. (2020). The development and evaluation of the Intersectional Privilege Screening Inventory for use with counselors-in-training. Counselor Education and Supervision, 59(2), 112–128. https://doi.org/10.1002/ceas.12170
52.
PolkinghorneD. E. (2015). The self and humanistic psychology. In SchneiderK. J.PiersonJ. F.BugentalJ. F. T. (Eds.), The handbook of humanistic psychology: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 87–104). SAGE.
53.
QuirosL.DawsonB. A. (2013). The color paradigm: The impact of colorism on the racial identity and identification of Latinas. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 23(3), 287–297. https://doi.org/10.1080/10911359.2012.740342
54.
RodriguezN. (2013). Stratification in higher education: What’s skin tone got to do with it? [Conference papers]. American Sociological Association.
55.
RogersC. R. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist’s view of psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
56.
SchneiderK. J. (2013). The polarized mind: Why it’s killing us and what we can do about it. University Professors Press.
57.
SchneiderK. J. (2015). Existential-integrative psychotherapy. Routledge.
58.
ShapiroD. N.ChandlerJ.MuellerP. A. (2013). Using Mechanical Turk to study clinical populations. Clinical Psychological Science, 1(2), 213–220. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702612469015
TolliverW. F.HaddenB. R.SnowdenF.Brown-ManningR. (2016). Police killings of unarmed Black people: Centering race and racism in human behavior and the social environment content. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 26(3–4), 279–286. https://doi.org/10.1080/10911359.2015.1125207
UzogaraE. E.LeeH.AbdouC. M.JacksonJ. S. (2014). A comparison of skin tone discrimination among African American men: 1995 and 2003. Psychology of Men & Masculinities, 15(2), 201–212. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033479
63.
van de SchootR.KaplanD.DenissenJ.AsendorpfJ. B.NeyerF. J.Van AkenM. A. (2014). A gentle introduction to Bayesian analysis: Applications to developmental research. Child Development, 85(3), 842–860. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12169
64.
van de SchootR.WinterS. D.RyanO.Zondervan-ZwijnenburgM.DepaoliS. (2017). A systematic review of Bayesian articles in psychology: The last 25 years. Psychological Methods, 22(2), 217–239. https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000100
65.
WangY.DavidsonM. M.YakushkoO. F.SavoyH. B.TanJ. A.BleierJ. K. (2003). The scale of ethnocultural empathy: Development, validation, and reliability. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 50(2), 221–234. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.50.2.221
66.
WestC. (1993). Race matters. Beacon Press.
67.
WildmanS. M.DavisA. D. (1995). Language and silence: Making systems of privilege visible. In DelgadoR. (Ed.), Critical race theory: The cutting edge (pp. 573–579). Temple University Press.
