The Shaky Science of Microaggression

The concept of microaggression has made the rare cultural journey from academic neologism to popular hashtag. The word was coined more than four decades ago, but only in the past few years has the idea found a foothold. And nowhere does that foot hold more strongly than on college campuses.

The New School, for example, lists three types of microaggression on its website: microinsult, microassault, and microinvalidation. The University of Utah offers a daylong training session for those who have “overheard an inappropriate remark.” A Mount Holyoke College handout gives examples of microaggressions, including statements like “You speak English so well, I don’t even hear an accent” and “Everyone in this society can succeed, if they work hard enough.”

But has the idea’s influence outstripped the science it’s based on?

Yes, according to a paper in Perspectives on Psychological Science by Scott O. Lilienfeld, a professor of psychology at Emory University and co-author of skeptical books like Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience (Basic Books, 2013) and What’s Wrong With the Rorschach? (Jossey-Bass, 2013). The paper, bluntly titled “Microaggressions: Strong Claims, Inadequate Evidence,” is a lengthy, seemingly exhaustive appraisal of the literature, in which Lilienfeld concludes that the theory is in a “premature state of scientific development.”

Or, as he put it when I met him recently, “not ready for prime time.”

You call for a moratorium on microaggression training programs. But you also write that it’s possible that they “assist in prejudice reduction” and that they’ve brought “much-needed attention to relatively mild manifestations of prejudice that have far too often been overlooked.” Why get rid of something that’s potentially doing some good?

At this point, we don’t know if it’s doing some good. It’s premature to know if they’re doing any good, because they haven’t been tested. One of the things we’ve learned over the years in psychology in general is that even very well-intentioned interventions — and I have no doubt that microaggression training programs are — can do more harm than good. We do know from some studies that prejudice-reduction programs can be harmful, that those programs can actually increase prejudice.

In a critique of your paper, Derald Wing Sue, author of Microaggressions in Everyday Life , quotes an African proverb, writing that your view “comes from only the perspective of the hunter and ignores that of the lion.” He goes on to say that “what constitutes evidence is often bathed in the values of the dominant society,” and that the scientific method can “shortchange real-world contexts.” What do you say to that?

Sure, we all have our biases. But science is ultimately the best means, though not a perfect one, of trying to sort through our biases and get to the bottom of things. On the one hand, Sue seems to want to argue that truth is largely subjective, and yet on the other hand, he wants us to believe that each microaggression produces a single response in every single minority individual. One cannot have it both ways.

Sue thinks you went too far; Jonathan Haidt thinks you didn’t go far enough. Haidt, a professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s school of business, has praised your paper but contends that microaggression theory is “more damaging and less salvageable” than you suggest. Were you pulling punches?

I would prefer to not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think there’s some truth to the microaggression concept. There’s truth to the idea that there are subtle forms of prejudice, and there’s truth to the idea that people inadvertently offend others because they don’t understand people’s racial or cultural backgrounds. But as currently conceptualized on college campuses, I’m inclined to agree with Jon that it’s probably not going to be helpful. I’m open to the possibility that in dramatically revised form it might do some good.

How much of your beef with the concept of microaggressions is simply the word “microaggression”?

That’s part of my quarrel but not all of my quarrel. Labels matter. The term includes the word “aggression,” and there’s no evidence that microaggressions are linked to aggressive behavior or aggressive thoughts in the people who deliver them. The term is oxymoronic. Psychologists almost always, in the literature, describe aggression as intentional and yet, according to Sue and his colleagues, most microaggressions are unintentional.

You see microaggression theory as part of psychology’s “troubling propensity to advance premature assertions in the absence of adequate evidence.” Does what’s wrong with microaggression theory fit within the larger conversation about what’s wrong with social psychology — that, for instance, many of the field’s findings don’t appear to be replicable?

It does fit broadly within the recent debates about how psychology can improve its scientific status. Part of what has given psychology a black eye is that we’ve tended to take certain findings that are preliminary and then run with them. I worry that this is yet another example that people who are already skeptical of psychology may roll their eyes at. And they may have a point.

Do you have any personal experience with what others might define as microaggressions?

I wouldn’t say it’s my personal experience so much as talking with faculty members who have had these experiences, and seeing the rapidity with which these claims were disseminated. On my campus, I learned that our graduate school was engaging in diversity training, and part of that training encouraged faculty to identify microaggressions. That piqued my curiosity. I wondered, “What is the evidence for that?”

To be clear, you call for a moratorium on microaggression training, but you encourage microaggression researchers to continue their work, right?

They should continue, and they should improve. But there’s a big difference between doing research that may inform psychological knowledge and applying it in the real world. A lot of college administrators may assume there is a very well-established body of knowledge on microaggressions. And that’s simply not true.

Tom Bartlett is a senior writer at The Chronicle. This interview has been edited and condensed.