The impact of individuals' racial identity and perpetrator's racial group membership on empathy for an outgroup victim

The previous research literature was reviewed on how perpetrator's group membership and individuals' racial identity impact intergroup attitude and behavior, as well as factors contribute to intergroup bias on individuals' empathy level. This study was designed to extend the existing research on intergroup relations by exploring the effect of perpetrator's ingroup/outgroup membership and the strength of racial identity on people's empathy toward the outgroup victims. A web-based survey was disseminated and administrated at a southwest university. One hundred and six Caucasian American college students who completed the survey and met the criterion of eighteen years old or older were involved in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to read one of two target stories and one distracter story, and reported their empathy level toward each story. And then the participants' strength of racial identity was measured.

Controlling for demographic variables, regression analyses revealed that, as expected, the interaction of the perpetrator's group membership and individuals' racial identity significantly predicted the level of empathy toward the outgroup victim. When the perpetrator was an ingroup member, people who highly identified with their group exhibited less empathy for the outgroup victim. However, perpetrator's membership and the strength of racial identity failed to predict individuals' outgroup empathy separately.