Antiracism Self-Efficacy: Motivating Individuals Toward Racial Justice

We integrate existing research on racial justice allyship and antiracism with social cognitive theory to develop our understanding of why and how individuals who identify as White in the context of the US may initiate and sustain antiracist behavior at the individual level. In Study 1a, we define the concept of antiracism self-efficacy and develop a seven-item measure. We then examine the extent to which the seven-item scale exhibits convergent and discriminant validity in Study 1b. In Study 2, we demonstrate that antiracism self-efficacy predicts a broad range of antiracist behavioral intentions and behaviors above and beyond racial attitudes and beliefs. Study 3 extends this argument using a bias-confrontation paradigm, demonstrating that antiracism self-efficacy predicts bias-confrontation outcomes above and beyond other motivational constructs and general self-efficacy. Overall, this work identifies and explores antiracism self-efficacy as an important concept that motivates individuals toward racial justice allyship and antiracist behavior at a micro (i.e., day-to-day) level. We posit that including antiracism self-efficacy in motivational models addressing allyship and antiracist behavior will help guide future empirical work on antiracism at the individual level, in addition to having important practical implications for racial justice/antiracism education, training, and other related initiatives within organizations.