Author ORCID Identifier

0009-0004-8384-9276

Date of Award

Summer 8-31-2025

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Clinical Psychology

First Advisor

Sarah A. Hayes-Skelton

Second Advisor

Lizabeth Roemer

Third Advisor

Jen H. Martinez

Abstract

The current study used multiple mediation models to explore the pathways and relationships among white privilege awareness, white emotional empathy, white cognitive empathy, white guilt, and different types of emotion regulation as predictors of individual and institutional antiracist engagement. Gaining an understanding of how white individuals experience and regulate certain racial emotions in the process of learning about their white privilege may inform antiracist trainings, diversity, equity and inclusion workshops, multicultural courses in schools, as well as counseling trainings in cultural humility. White adults (N = 170) were recruited through an online crowdsourcing platform (Prolific) and completed a brief (~20 min) online survey. Direct and indirect relationships were tested via models 4, 6, and 15 of the PROCESS macro for SPSS. Results supported previous research showing white emotional empathy and white guilt to be significant mediators in the relation between white privilege awareness and antiracist action. Additionally, the present study found a significant serial mediation of white cognitive empathy and emotional empathy, such that cognitive empathy led to emotional empathy and together they predicted engagement in antiracist action. The hypotheses of different types of emotion regulation moderating any of the above mediations were not supported. Neither higher acceptance-based emotion regulation nor cognitive emotion regulation strategies of positive reappraisal and putting into perspective had an effect on white individuals' levels of antiracist action engagement, suggesting that white individuals experiencing white empathy and white guilt are processing them in other ways or that the study design could not accurately capture emotion regulation of these complex constructs. Finally, the current study analyzed differences in the above mediations when predicting action that is individual (e.g., challenging racism interpersonally) versus institutional (e.g., participating in an antiracist organization). White emotional empathy and white guilt were significant mediators when predicting both individual and institutional action. However, the serial mediation of white cognitive empathy and emotional empathy was not significant when predicting institutional antiracist action, indicating there may be other important factors to consider along with white empathy when considering engagement in collective action. Overall, the present study supports interventions that focus on promoting white empathy as a way to increase white antiracist action and contributes to the growing literature demonstrating that white guilt can be a motivating factor in white racial identity development, rather than an emotion that naturally leads to white defensiveness and dissuades one from action.

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