Testimonies of Race-Based Suffering: Individual Differences in Openness to the Other

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session I
  In Interactive Paper Session: Ethnicity and Race in Communication Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

The present study employed a variety of existing measures to assess openness to the other in the ecologically valid context of listening to real-life testimonies of race-based suffering. Variation in symbolic threat, as well individual differences in Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), were all investigated for their impact on respondent openness. Among 39 student volunteers it was found that a woman's testimony featuring a high degree of symbolic threat engendered less openness to the other across cognitive and affective measures than less threatening testimony offered by a man. Additionally, participant levels of RWA and SDO explained a significant amount of variance in their openness to the other. This study quantitatively confirms that testimonies of race-based suffering- utterances that have great potential to interrupt master narratives and invite deep learning- are likely to be met with a complex pattern of resistance that must be more fully understood.

Author

• Aaron Castelan Cargile, California State U