Allies against Prejudice: Exploring Strategies for Confronting Biased Remarks

Researchers have studied factors influencing whether individuals will confront someone who expresses prejudice, as well as people's motivations for confronting, but have not delved into the specific strategies that people tend to employ. Two experiments examine the use of different rhetorical strategies for confronting instances of bias and these strategies' effectiveness at producing desirable outcomes. In Study 1, participants confronted someone who had used a derogatory word (e.g., "retarded"). Participants were most likely to utilize direct confrontation strategies (e.g., using threats). In Study 2, third-party observers judged these direct strategies to be less effective than more indirect strategies (e.g., appeals to descriptive norms). Additionally, for some outcomes, third-party observers expected direct strategies to backfire, relative to a baseline strategy. Our results suggest that potential confronters may misjudge which confrontation strategies are likely to be the most effective and also provide insight into which strategies may lead to more desirable outcomes.