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Varni, Susan Elizabeth

Psychology

2005

MA

Two studies explored the expectations that people have about the reactions of those who are the victims of discrimination. The first study established that White observers perceive an act of racial discrimination as both discriminatory and unjust. Observers were also able to provide a narrative of what they expected the victim of discrimination to do next. The responses to discrimination generated by the participants were very similar to what people in past research on injustice thought victims of injustice should do. The second study established that participants who observed discrimination expected different responses from victims as a function of how harmful the behavior was and whether or not the offender intended to discriminate. These results indicate that there are cognitive scripts for injustice that vary as a function of the offender's intent to discriminate and the harm his behavior causes the victims of discrimination. An implication of these findings is that the consistency of the victim's response to discrimination with people's scripts about reactions to the injustice of discrimination may have important consequences for how observers perceive victim responses to discrimination.