The Significance of Affirmative Action for the Souls of White Folk: Further Implications of a Helping Model

Journal of Social Issues, Winter, 1999 by Anthony R. Pratkanis, Marlene E. Turner

More recently, Pettigrew (1981) has provided a review of empirical studies looking at the effects of racism on the mental health of White Americans. In many ways, his review empirically supports the observations made by Jefferson, Douglass, and others over a century ago. First, Pettigrew found few studies that directly looked at the mental health effects of being prejudiced. Second, although few in number, these studies gave a remarkably consistent view of the mental health effects of prejudice among normal (that is, noninstitutionalized) White Americans. As Pettigrew put it: "Prejudice is found to correlate positively with symptoms that correspond to hypochondriasis, depression, psychopathic deviadons, schizophrenia, and hypomania, and negatively with both defensiveness and hysteria" (p. 100). Finally, Pettigrew noted that prejudiced people are especially likely not to experience positive mental health, as evidenced by a self that is self-aware, self-accepting, autonomous, stable, competent, capable of accu rately perceiving reality, and fully integrated and whole. Prejudice blocks the development of such a mature self. For example, when prejudice leads to scapegoating of an outgroup, it requires a distortion of reality (projection of stereotypes onto outgroups), conformity (to groups supporting the projection), rigid dichotomized thinking, and a failure to face the challenges of the situation.

The Helper Model of Affirmative Action

Although there is very little research on the psychological effects of being a racist, by looking at the impact of help on the donor (in contrast to the effects on the recipient, as we did in our previous articles), the helping model of affirmative action can be used to understand the answer to two sets of important questions: (a) What motivates White racism and conversely White desires for equality? and (b) What effect does racism and equality have on Whites? The act of helping, whether through affirmative action or other means, is stimulated by certain antecedents and results in specific consequences. We view these in terms of a psychological field (Lewin, 1935, 1948; Pratkanis & Turner, 1993) in which an individual with needs, perceptions, and beliefs is placed in a social situation with certain norms, barriers, and social forces. Often the individual experiences tensions and conflicts in such a field that must be resolved, and in doing so the individual's attitudes and beliefs come to serve various psych ological functions (Pratkanis & Greenwald, 1989). Three factors are important to consider in the construction of the psychological field of helping through affirmative action.

First, help is a choice. Although the decision to help can be automatic or thoughtful, planned or spontaneous, formal or informal, it still represents a choice, and thus help may not be given under certain conditions, such as when (a) norms specify that help is not appropriate, (b) the recipient is perceived as dissimilar from the donor, (c) the situation is interpreted as not requiring help, or (d) the donor experiences personal conflicts (Schroeder, Penner, Dovidio, & Piliavin, 1995). Thus, affirmative action will not be rendered in all cases.