Confronters Can Cause Harm by Soliciting Marginalized Employees’ Voice When Confronting Prejudice

When confronting acts of prejudice in the workplace, advantaged group confronters may solicit input—or voice—from employees who belong to disadvantaged groups, thereby involving them (potentially against their will) in the confrontation. Across three pre-registered studies (N=1448) —using multiple prejudice confrontation and voice solicitation situations and different disadvantaged groups (i.e., women and racially marginalized individuals)—we find that doing so has negative affective consequences for the disadvantaged group member and negative evaluative consequences for the ally. Specifically, members of disadvantaged groups whose voices are directly solicited by an ally during a prejudice confrontation experience greater emotional burden; in turn, they view the ally as less deserving of status and seek to minimize their future exposure to the ally. We also demonstrate that this effect is contingent on two factors: whether the perpetrator of prejudice is present (or absent) when the confronter solicits voice, and how directly they solicit voice from the disadvantaged group member. Together, our findings highlight the theoretical value and practical importance of examining prejudice confrontations from the disadvantaged group member’s perspective.