Interpreting Microaggressions: The Role of Discourse Context, Recipient Status, and Observers’ Political Orientation

Microaggressions require an inferential process for their aggressive intent to be recognized. Using approaches from pragmatics, especially relevance theory, we conducted experiments to examine factors predicted to influence perceptions of an utterance as a microaggression. Participants read scenarios describing an interaction between two people and indicated their perceptions of a target remark. We expected and found that an utterance was more likely to be perceived as a microaggression if (a) it occurred in a context for which its relevance was not clear, thereby prompting observers to infer an aggressive intent, and (b) the recipient was a person of marginalized status. Furthermore, these effects were larger for participants with a more liberal political orientation relative to those who were more conservative. This was due, in part, to variability in Theory of Mind capabilities and beliefs about microaggressions associated with political orientation.