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What's Race Got to Do with It? Responses to Consumer Discrimination
Author(s) -
Evett Sophia R.,
Hakstian AnneMarie G.,
Williams Jerome D.,
Henderson Geraldine R.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
analyses of social issues and public policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.479
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1530-2415
pISSN - 1529-7489
DOI - 10.1111/j.1530-2415.2012.01297.x
Subject(s) - race (biology) , perception , perspective (graphical) , psychology , social psychology , ethnic group , white (mutation) , consumer behaviour , sociology , gender studies , biochemistry , chemistry , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , computer science , anthropology , gene
Consumer discrimination occurs when sales clerks and other store employees, including security personnel, treat customers differently because of their race or ethnicity. The goal of the present research was to examine how participants perceived a case of consumer discrimination and what actions they felt the victim should take. Based on Robinson's theory of perceptual segregation, we examined whether the perceptions and responses of white participants differed from those of people of color. We also drew on the liberation psychology tenets of conscientization and de‐ideologization with particular emphasis on taking the perspective of the oppressed, by measuring participants’ level of perceived societal discrimination. These two individual difference variables (participant race and perceived societal discrimination) significantly predicted participants’ perceptions of the situation and their emotional responses, which, in turn, mediated how they thought the customer should respond.