Background:Microaggressions are unintentional or intentional hostile, insulting, or stereotypical racial slurs directed towards a person of color (POC). This insensitivity of racial biases can be seen in conversations and actions, such as a majority individual telling a minority individual that was born in America that they speak great English as if that minority individual is a foreigner (Sue et al., 2007). Microaggressions are being seen more commonly in educational settings, leading college students detecting and experiencing it. Microaggressions are difficult to detect when it occurs, so the intensity of the microaggression is perceived as a common indicator. Findings have revealed a difference on all levels of emotions toward professor's culturally biased perspective between overt microaggression and no microaggression, very ambiguous microaggression, and ambiguous microaggressions Tao et al. (2017)
Purpose:The present study utilizes data from research that focused on the cognitive and affective impacts of witnessing a microaggression in the college classroom
Methods A national sample of 171 White American college students and 204 non-White college students were recruited. Participants were randomly assigned to either an overt or covert microaggression condition or a neutral race-based interaction condition. In each condition, they read vignettes that depicted a student-instructor interaction (instructor was depicted as White-American or person of color (POC). Participants rated each interaction from positive to negative and briefly justified each rating. In addition, participants self-reported their microaggression experiences, frequency of microaggressions witnessed, colorblind racial attitudes, ethnocultural empathy, and ethnic identity. Participants in the covert microaggression condition appeared to differ in their ratings based on whether or not they detected a microaggression based open-ended justifications of their ratings (i.e., participants noted the interaction was racist or described the microaggression). Research Aim: This research study focused on the detection of microaggressions and the profile of participants who are able to detect a microaggression versus those who did not.
The open-ended responses were coded to determine participants who detected the microaggression versus those who did not. A profile analysis was used to determine latent classes of students in the sample and four profiles were identified.
A logistic regression was then used to determine if the variables used to determine the latent class membership could predict microaggression detection.
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We are seeking research assistants to help us write up results and conduct further analysis on our data set! If you are interested in using statistics to help find answers in regards to racial discrimination (racial microaggressions), please consider joining our team!
Papa, L. A , Mavroudis, D., Diaz, A. V., & Stephens, T. A. (2022, April). Predictors for the detection of racial and ethnic microaggressions among college students. Poster presented at the 102nd annual convention of the Western Psychological Association, Portland, OR.