Racism, and
particularly the oppression of Black citizens, remains a significant problem in
the United States. This manuscript reports on an experiment studying the
effects of mortality salience and active perspective-taking empathy on racial
bias. Specifically, social empathy was hypothesized to counteract the increased
in-group preferential bias typical of those primed with mortality salience. The
sample consisted of n = 111 White
emerging adults affiliated with a small Midwest American university. Death
anxiety and active perspective-taking were experimentally manipulated, and the
dependent variables were implicit bias change scores (pre-test versus post-test
on the Race-Related Implicit Association
Test using White/Black faces) and explicit racial prejudice (self-report
scores on the Quick Discrimination
Inventory and Scale of Ethnocultural
Empathy). The four experimental groups did not differ on implicit bias
change scores or explicit discrimination scores—neither main effects nor interaction
effects were statistically significant. However, the QDI and SEE were
correlated (r = .76, p > .001), thus supporting their
construct validity, and the pre-scores on the Race IAT across the whole sample
were statistically significantly higher than the post-scores, with a moderate
effect size (t(110) = 3.13, p = .002, eta-squared = .08). Findings appear to indicate that engaging in
active perspective-taking, regardless of the race of the target and regardless
of the presence of mortality salience, leads to decreased implicit racial
prejudice. Empathy training in various clinical and educational settings could
lead to a reduction in prejudiced attitudes, and ultimately aid in the
dismantling of American racism.
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