Oppositional Courage for Racial and Ethnic Minorities: A Source of White Employees’ Upward Moral Comparison

Abstract

When advantaged group employees courageously stand up for the rights of their colleagues with marginalized identities, research suggests that they communicate a powerful, public “message of value” to such individuals. Yet, this beneficiary-focused perspective, while valuable, does not address the self-meanings that third-party observers may derive from such oppositional courage (OC) and the implications for their behavior toward the courageous actor. Drawing on the social comparison literature, we propose that perceptions of OC can be a source of upward moral comparison information for advantaged group observers. Thus, on the one hand, we argue that perceptions of OC can convey to observers that they lack the moral character of the courageous actor, which is associated with feelings of moral inferiority and, in turn, a motivation to negatively gossip about the actor. On the other hand, we suggest that perceptions of OC can also signal to observers their moral capacity to actively contribute to an equitable, inclusive workplace, which is associated with feelings of moral elevation and, in turn, a motivation to positively gossip about the actor. Central to our theory, we argue that these different reactions depend on observers’ own self-confidence to engage in similar courageous action—what we refer to as oppositional courage self-efficacy. Using data from White employees, we conducted one pilot study (i.e., a critical incident analysis) and two main studies (i.e., an experiment and a three-wave survey), on OC for racial and ethnic minorities and found support for our hypotheses. We conclude by discussing the implications of our research.