Abstract Racial-ethnic gaps in perception of racism are persistent in the United States, perhaps because the acknowledgement of racism is threatening to European Americans. Supporting this argument, preliminary research indicates that self-affirmation boosts European Americans’ perception of racism and reduces the gap between European and Hispanic Americans’ perception of racism. Although promising, these studies were limited by relatively low statistical power and no subsequent studies have assessed their robustness. We conducted 3 pre-registered experiments testing the effect of self-affirmation on perception of racism. Surprisingly, self-affirmation failed to increase European Americans’ perception of racism (Study 1–3). Further, self-affirmation failed to reduce the gap between European and African Americans’ perception of racism (Study 3). Our results challenge the notion that self-affirmation reliably alters perception of racism. Discussion highlights methodological, cultural, and historical differences between studies that may explain discrepancies in results.

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肯定是治疗方法吗？自我肯定与欧美人对系统性种族主义的认知

摘要 种族歧视在美国一直存在，这可能是因为承认种族主义对欧洲裔美国人构成威胁。支持这一论点的初步研究表明，自我肯定增强了欧洲裔美国人对种族主义的看法，并缩小了欧洲裔美国人和西班牙裔美国人对种族主义看法之间的差距。尽管有希望，但这些研究受到相对较低的统计功效的限制，并且没有后续研究评估其稳健性。我们进行了 3 个预先注册的实验，测试自我肯定对种族主义感知的影响。令人惊讶的是，自我肯定未能增加欧洲裔美国人对种族主义的看法（研究 1-3）。此外，自我肯定未能缩小欧洲人和非裔美国人对种族主义的看法之间的差距（研究 3）。我们的结果挑战了自我肯定可以可靠地改变对种族主义的看法的观念。讨论强调了可能解释结果差异的研究之间的方法、文化和历史差异。