Worse Than I Thought: How a Model of a Racial Dialogue Affects White People’s Anxiety

Self-selection bias often occurs in multicultural education interventions, like intergroup dialogue, where students who already have greater levels of critical consciousness opt to participate, and many who could benefit from multicultural and social justice education opt out. For racial dialogues in particular, White people may experience anxiety, fear, guilt, and shame that prevent them wanting to participate in this type of group. In this study, we examined the use of a video modeling a racial dialogue with the goal of producing lower intergroup anxiety and greater interest in future participation. Contrary to our hypotheses, there was no significant difference between experimental and control conditions on intergroup conversation anxiety or interest. Additionally, participants who saw the video model exhibited more state anxiety compared to those who did not. We also examined the moderating effect of White guilt on the relation between condition and intergroup conversation interest, and did not find significant results. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.