Reappraising Interracial Interactions: Can Positive Emotions Increase Willingness to Engage? (2012)

Undergraduates: Maya Foster, Jazmin Brown

Faculty Advisor: Keith Payne
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience

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Stressful interracial contact can lead to unwillingness to engage in future contact with outgroup members. Specifically, anxiety during interracial interactions can lead to anxious non-verbal behaviors (i.e. blinking, fidgeting, twitching, etc.) that diminish the quality of interracial contact. We suggest that reappraising emotions before an interaction can reduce unwanted non-verbal behavior and lead to positive interactions, thus increasing willingness to engage in the future. Seventy-five White participants were told to either adopt an “unemotional” attitude or received no instruction before having a ten minute conversation with either a Black or White confederate. We measured participants’ liking and future willingness to engage after the interaction. Participants who reappraised reported liking their partner less than participants in control condition. High internal motivation to control prejudice was associated with liking the Black confederate. High external motivation was associated with liking the White confederate. We offer several explanations for our findings, and comment on the future investigation of the reappraisal strategy during interracial contact.