Abstract
Microaggression research has made great strides over the past decade while steadily pushing itself into mainstream psychological science. Yet the field remains firmly situated within the Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) cultural context. Correspondingly, recurring criticisms against the validity of microaggressions are often rooted in individualist, decontextualized understandings of behavior, and critics’ rebuttals are often grounded in a philosophical and reflective understanding of the cultural context. In this article, I put forward that (a) the enactments and appraisals of microaggressions are the behavioral results of the cognitive salience of cultural schemas; (b) cultural schemas are informed by cultural ideologies, underlining their methodological and empirical relevance for future research; and (c) cultures are dynamic by highlighting the effects of geopolitical events on the content of cultural schemas that may moderate the perception and enactment of microaggressions. For these reasons, I argue that a cultural psychology of microaggressions may help to depathologize the individual by situating behavior in its cultural context while at the same time necessitating the inclusion of communities residing in non-WEIRD societies.
Keywords
“The topic of women’s rights may be difficult for Karim to listen to, considering his father’s Algerian heritage.”
“Whenever there was a technical problem in one of the lecture halls, the university technicians who’d come over to solve the issue would often completely ignore me and approach one of my Chinese students, as if an Indian woman cannot be a professor.”
“I remember Chinese girls regularly climbing out of the swimming pool exactly when I would go in, as if my dark skin color was going to infect them with some kind of disease.”
On May 31, 2020, Perspectives on Psychological Science issued a call for manuscripts that touch on the state of microaggression research and its new directions. This resulted in a special issue of unprecedented timely relevance. The editors, Monnica T. Williams and Laura A. King, did a commendable job selecting articles highlighting a diverse range of issues relevant to the psychology of microaggressions. The call emphasized an openness to submissions from all areas of psychology without centering any specific subfield such as clinical psychology and did not ask for a focus on any particular region such as the United States.
Yet what stood out was that each contributor was aligned with a North American university. Perhaps unsurprisingly, each article predominantly, if not fully, focused on microaggressions within the U.S. context. Considering that the scholarship on microaggressions positions itself as counterhegemonic by listening to the voices of the oppressed, it is surprising that no articles were included that discuss the psychology of microaggressions outside the U.S.—or Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) 1 —microcosm. This was undoubtedly unintentional because such scholarly omissions often operate outside conscious awareness, especially when already centering marginalized voices within that microcosm—an admirable endeavor in itself. It may also well be that no (publication-worthy) manuscripts were submitted by scholars from any country outside the United States, which, in that case, would indicate that a sense of relevance (or urgency) to study microaggressions internationally is (still) lacking. Some findings indeed hint at this possibility: When searching PsycINFO and Google Scholar, Spanierman et al. (2021) found 395 articles on microaggressions, of which a mere 17 studied populations outside the United States and Canada.
Yet it seems unlikely that microaggressions are a localized phenomenon that applies only to the West, within the United States in particular. In fact, I would argue that the expression of microaggressions is a global phenomenon that shows (a) highly specific cross-national similarities (e.g., directed at darker-skinned individuals) stemming from similar sociohistorical trajectories rooted in asymmetrical cultural globalization (e.g., colonialism) and, conversely, (b) cross-national differences rooted in the sociohistorical particularities of each culture (e.g., culture-specific ethnic hierarchies). Although most articles in the special issue seemed to agree on the centrality of culture, the linkage between culture and microaggressions was often deductively and philosophically assumed without discussing the potential of applying methods used in cultural psychology. Cultural psychology emerged from a critique of a Western-centered approach that has traditionally relegated the treatment of culture to a secondary status (often considered “noise”), whereas cultural psychology treats culture as essential to informing, expanding, and refining psychological theories, often by using the deep understanding and expertise of people within the cultures that are being studied. In particular, cultural psychology challenges the notion that behavior can be studied as abstracted from the social environment, therefore adopting an interdisciplinary approach that explores the ways in which culture and the mind mutually constitute each other (Stigler et al., 1990). As such, it places the cultural context as the foundation of everyday behavior, actively promoting the inclusion of populations (including scholars) from a multitude of non-WEIRD cultural contexts.
In this article, I first highlight the essential role of cultural schemas in the enactment and appraisal of microaggressions. I then go on to discuss the value of granting methodological significance to cultural ideologies because these inform cultural schemas. Finally, I discuss the importance of cultural dynamics that moderate the cognitive content of cultural schemas that may affect the expression and perception of microaggressions.
Culture as the Macrocosm of Microaggressions
The first quote at the beginning of this article is from my own experience as a Dutch individual with an Algerian father and Dutch mother; the second and third quotes are from two people dear to me. All statements carry within them an assumption—a lens through which one interprets motivations behind behavior. This touches on a central debate in microaggression research that was regularly referred to in the special issue: the importance of appraisals (e.g., Hodson, 2021; Johnson et al., 2021; Ong, 2021). A mainstream psychological approach often situates the appraisal process wholly within the individual. This can be seen in two recurring arguments used by scholars who question the validity of microaggressions: First, the victim is accused of being overly sensitive, or their sympathizers are accused of promoting concept creep of what constitutes harmful behavior; and second, the perpetrator cannot engage in microaggressions when intent is absent (Hodson, 2021). Both arguments put the onus on the victimized individual by either portraying the perception of microaggressions as the result of pathological sensitivity or by expecting the victim to determine whether an act is intentional.
However, a cultural-psychological approach externalizes part of the appraisal process and explains the above examples as natural consequences of the activation of cultural schemas (Chiu & Hong, 2007, 2013). Cultural-psychological research shows that culture-congruent behavior is triggered mostly outside one’s awareness through external cues, also called cultural cues or artifacts. Any cultural unit can be an artifact ranging from language to architectural styles that function as contextual primes triggering cultural schemas that become a lens through which one sees the world (e.g., Hong et al., 2000). An example would be the cognitive priming of cultural stereotypes about Black people, which may occur when perceiving an individual who carries an expression of the many sub-Saharan African phenotypes.
Indeed, skin color and “race” (or any other visible social category that carries cultural meaning) are highly salient cultural artifacts that may trigger comparable cultural schemas in both perpetrators and victims (assuming they are from the same culture) but likely result in very different behavioral outcomes because the schemas interact with the hierarchical position of the two actors vis-à-vis each other. To get back to the first argument above, even when a behavioral gesture from one person (e.g., White) to the other (e.g., Black) is perceived as harmless or meaningless by some, the automatic activation of cultural schemas in the victim (e.g., one’s hierarchical position vis-à-vis the interaction partner based on cultural conceptions of race) colors the interpretation of the behaviors in a way that is incomparable to the appraisal of someone whose racial status is not marginalized. Hence, a Black individual may see harm, whereas a White individual may not. We can also apply a cultural-psychological framework to the second argument: Even when the perpetrator (e.g., White) has no harmful intent, the unconscious activation of cultural schemas (e.g., White superiority) when race is salient may result in automatic, demeaning behavioral tendencies that are outside one’s conscious awareness. Thus, cultural-psychological understandings of microaggressions would support the harm-based (instead of act-based) approach to microaggressions put forward by Freeman and Stewart (2021).
Indeed, there are many ways in which one can empirically put such divergent effects of cultural schemas to the test, potentially explaining why microaggressions are very real for some whereas others remain unaware of them. One can, for example, compare Black versus White participants’ appraisal of the same interracial interaction while exposing them to cultural artifacts (e.g., Confederate flag) priming inequality-enhancing cultural ideologies (e.g., White Supremacy) to see whether it heightens or lowers the perception of microaggressions, respectively. One can also repeat the study but instead have only White participants appraise the same interaction in an intraracial setting but manipulate (a) power differences between the interaction partners and (b) the participants’ social identification with either of the actors to test whether such contextual changes influence the appraisal among members of racially high-status groups. As such, a cultural-psychological approach to microaggressions depathologizes the individual by highlighting the powerful effects of cultural context, thus counteracting the criticisms against the validity of microaggressions that tend to strip behaviors from their context to argue that such behaviors should not be seen as microaggressions (Hodson, 2021).
Centrality of cultural ideologies
That brings me to the crucial role of cultural ideologies. Cognitive schemas are heavily informed by cultural ideologies because such ideologies are nested in every layer of society to the point that they are institutionalized. The overrepresentation of whiteness in science or the media, for example, materialized through cultural artifacts (e.g., movies, textbooks), continuously primes cognitive schemas of White normativity and can be traced back to White supremacist ideology (Bettache, 2020; Liu et al., 2019). Indeed, many of the articles in the special issue acknowledged the central role cultural ideologies play in the expression of microaggressions. In fact, cultural ideologies bridge the currently U.S.-centric microaggressions field with the rest of the world as asymmetrical globalization (i.e., from the West to the rest), starting with European colonialism and maintained through the spread of free-market economics, has inserted into local cultures across the world Western ideologies such as White supremacy and meritocracy (Bettache & Chiu, 2019)—two ideologies that, according to multiple articles in the special issue, are central to microaggressions (e.g., Haeny et al., 2021; Skinner-Dorkenoo et al., 2021; Spanierman et al., 2021).
Indeed, I recently argued that White supremacy is one of the core ideological drivers behind the severe skin-color discrimination one can observe in multiple cultures across Asia. Examples are within-family bullying of women and girls with tanned skin, or the portrayal of dark-skinned individuals as unwashed and unclean in popular culture (Bettache, 2020). Coincidentally, at around the same time Coutts (2020) released his study showing that a pro-White implicit bias can be observed globally, with Singapore (a former British colony) showing the world’s strongest bias. Other non-Western countries, such as China, follow closely with a position in the top 10. An individualist understanding of these cross-cultural similarities would assign such pro-White biases to internal dispositions of the respondents, indirectly naturalizing them as behavioral universals rooted in human nature. A cultural-psychological approach on the other hand assumes cross-cultural similarity in artifacts that continuously cognitively prime pro-White schemas. One can imagine that such findings have tremendous consequences for inequality-enhancing behaviors such as microaggressions and the necessity to include a cultural-psychological approach to study their expressions. Nevertheless, most interrogations of cultural ideologies in relation to microaggressions remain rooted in critical theory, reflective approaches, and inquiries into illustrative cases. Understandably, Syed (2021) critiqued the assumption of a racially stratified society in microaggression research when it “is never tested empirically and rarely even directly stated” (p. 927). Hence, I suggest expanding the philosophically inspired discussion that predominantly describes culture and its ideologies as ever present but ephemeral ghosts that lurk behind microaggressions by granting them methodological and empirical significance in future research. To give an example, my colleagues and I showed that in prototypically neoliberal (or “free-market”) societies, a subscription to meritocratic beliefs was positively associated with the social exclusion of marginalized groups and a reluctance to engage in corrective collective action that challenges social inequality (Bettache et al., 2020). Comparably, in a different study, my colleagues and I showed that in Hong Kong (also a former British colony), the endorsement of neoliberal beliefs (e.g., individual freedom, meritocracy, economic freedom) primed participants to prefer light-skinned over darker-skinned job applicants, suggesting a schematic association between such (Western) values and colorism potentially resulting in colorist microaggressions (Beattie et al., 2019). Such inquiries highlight that the troubling trend of global anti-Black behaviors may thus be found (a) in culture, or nurture, instead of nature (Salter et al., 2018), as well as (b) inside and outside the North American context.
Second, researchers can also attempt to unpack cultural particularities. In addition to cross-cultural similarities in the ideological triggers of microaggressions, such as White supremacy, each culture brings along with it its own highly specific group (e.g., gender, ethnicity) hierarchies, as well as local ideologies. Let us go back to the first personal quote above. The assumption of my former high school history teacher that my half Algerian (North African) heritage obstructs my moral compassion for women’s rights may be rooted not only in White supremacy but also a form of orientalism prevalent in mainstream Dutch society that is regularly aimed at its most marginalized minority groups: Moroccans, and North Africans in general (De Bruijn et al., 2020). Comparably, the remaining two quotes suggest cultural specificities on gender and race, and race and skin color, respectively. Thus, although a multitude of inequality-enhancing ideologies have nested themselves cross-culturally, culture may interact with the way they are expressed. White supremacist beliefs may, for instance, interact with culture, resulting in cross-cultural differences in the evaluation of target individuals based on race/ethnicity. That is, whereas African Americans may be one of the most frequently targeted groups in the United States, the endorsement of White supremacist beliefs may target dark-skinned Indians most strongly in places such as Singapore and Hong Kong considering that British colonialism had historically positioned Indians among the lowest ranked racial groups within these Asian colonies (Barr, 1999). Another example would be the persistence of classist colorism that one can still observe in multiple Asian societies today (Bettache, 2020). Such ideological beliefs about social value based on skin color (not necessarily tied to the construct of race) suggest a likelihood of within-racial-group microaggressions in addition to between-group variants, not to mention the interactive potential between colorism (rooted in classism) and racism (rooted in European colonialism) resulting, for example, in the heightened awareness—as well as likelihood of being the target—of microaggressions among individuals deemed to have low social value on both constructs (e.g., Indian-Singaporean and dark-skinned) versus those who do not (e.g., Chinese-Singaporean and dark-skinned). These are just a few examples of the multilayered effects of culture suggesting the potential for expanding an intersectional approach into the cultural-psychological domain to contribute to the expansion of microaggression research.
Cultural dynamism
A final aspect of culture relevant to the onset or strengthening of microaggressions is its interaction with geopolitical, time-specific events that heighten the salience of discriminated groups (e.g., Bettache & Chiu, 2018). Some articles in the special issue did indeed highlight the influence of such events on microaggressions. For instance, Waxman (2021) discussed the uptick in hate crimes in the age of Black Lives Matter and Trumpism. Skinner-Dorkenoo et al. (2021) mentioned the pathologizing of cultural traditions of Muslim communities after the 9/11 attacks. And perhaps more importantly, Singh et al. (2021) explicitly advised scholars to let “current sociocultural and political situations” guide scale development. Unfortunately, beyond such referrals, no central attention was given to the importance of these highly impactful periodic events on not only the expression but also the perception of microaggressions (for a systems view on the psychology of resistance during such events, see Leach & Zeineddine, 2021). Indeed, when one considers the explosive surge of anti-Muslim sentiments post-9/11, or the sudden rise of the “Stop Asian Hate” movement as a response to a culture of racializing the Covid virus, we may start to pay particular attention to how these (temporally highly relevant) events moderate cultural schemas by conditioning new information with existing social categories through the surge of cultural artifacts that prime the salience of these categories. For example, the excessive pairing of Muslims with violent extremism in public discourse (e.g., the news media) during Bush’s “War on Terror” undoubtedly shaped and/or reinforced orientalist cultural assumptions about Muslims or Arab-looking people. Unsurprisingly, Muslims across the world complained about the debilitating intensification of everyday microaggressions they had to endure, such as the need to explain their religion or latently denounce Islamist extremism (Haque et al., 2019; Sirin et al., 2021). Indeed, my colleagues in Hong Kong recently showed that by repeatedly pairing markers of multiple cultures at the same time (e.g., U.S. and Chinese national flags/local cuisines/dress styles) participants started to perceive these cultures as more entitative and different from each other. In other words, stereotyping spiked merely as a result of repeatedly presenting artifacts of two different cultures at the same time without necessarily contrasting them conceptually (Chiu & Kwan, 2016). As such, the repeated pairing of Muslim and American/Western artifacts post-9/11 may have had comparable effects on the perception of group entitativity, resulting in the observed increase in the everyday enactment of prejudicial behaviors toward, as well as the perception of such behaviors by, members of Muslim communities.
Conclusion
As Johnson et al. (2021) fittingly wrote: “It’s not in your head.” Microaggressions and their appraisals are highly context-dependent and often rooted in the external cultural world. As such, future research may benefit from integrating cultural-psychological methods into the more established research on microaggressions, such as clinical-psychological research, not only to depathologize appraisals of microaggressions by externalizing the phenomenon as an expression of culture but also to help center the humanity of all marginalized communities beyond the WEIRD microcosm.
Footnotes
Transparency
Action Editor: Monnica T. Williams
Editor: Laura King