Perceptions of Confronters of Racist Remarks Towards Interracial Couples: The Effects of Confronter Race, Assertiveness, Explicit Bias, and Participant Race

Confronting prejudicial comments has been shown to reduce bias towards minority groups (Czopp et al., 2006). Previous research has demonstrated that perceptions of those who confront prejudicial comments differ as a function of factors such as confronter race (Czopp & Monteith, 2006, Rasinski & Czopp, 2010; Dickter et al., 2012; Zou & Dickter, 2013). The current study extends previous research to examining perceptions of confronters who confront prejudice towards interracial couples on social media. We studied the effects of participant race, confronter race, assertiveness, and explicit bias on the perceptions of the confronter on social media. Black and White participants throughout the United States (n = 156) viewed a Twitter post from a Black-White interracial couple followed by both a racist comment and a confronting comment (varied by confronter race and assertiveness of the comment). Results indicated that confronters were perceived more positively when they used a low assertive approach and were rated more negatively by Black compared to White participants overall. Additionally, those who had more explicit biases towards outgroups and interracial couples perceived the confronter more negatively