Investigating the Effects of Empathy on Implicit Race Bias

Over the years there have been changes to social norms, which now discourage expressions of prejudice, and changes in many people’s self-reported attitudes, but prejudice is still a major issue in present-day American society. One important step toward addressing prejudice and social injustices is to understand the psychological processes that underlie and strengthen them. The current study aimed to use an empathy passage to positively prime the schema about a minority person of color and manipulate regulation of implicit bias. The study utilized a mixed 2 × 2 design. Sixty-four participants (Mage = 20.88 years, SD = 4.75 years) were recruited to complete a laboratory experiment. After completing a demographic survey and a perceived discrimination scale, participants were randomly assigned into an Empathy induction group and a Control group. Both groups completed a racial brief implicit attitudes test (BIAT) before and after the empathy manipulation. Participants in the Empathy group read a vignette describing a social interaction between members of different races, whereas the control group read a paragraph that did not involve racial topics. Empathy manipulation (empathy vs. control) was the between subjects factor, and the timing of the IAT was the within subjects factor. Moreover, the participants’ perceived affective valence and arousal during the empathy manipulation were assessed by the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM). IAT D scores were analyzed by a mixed ANOVA. A regression model was also conducted to examine whether SAM arousal scores predicted change in post-intervention IAT scores. The results of the ANOVA indicated a significant main effect of IAT scores (pre vs post), but not a significant main effect of group (empathy vs control) or an interaction between IAT scores and group. Further, the overall fit of a regression model was statistically significant, suggesting that the variance in post-intervention IAT scores is accounted for by arousal ratings and race of participant (white vs non-white), with white participants driving the significance. These findings suggest that white participants were more emotionally engaged with the content of the study resulting in better performance, which contribute to the study of implicit race bias and have implications in applied settings.