Testing the Efficacy of Brief Multicultural Education Interventions in White College Students

This pilot study tested the overall and relative efficacy of 3 common approaches to multicultural education in a sample (N = 52) of White undergraduate students using a randomized controlled trial. Brief multicultural education interventions were delivered in the form of educational, social norming, and entertainment conditions. Affective (i. e., White guilt) and cognitive (i. e., awareness of White privilege) outcomes of interventions were assessed. Possible causal relations between intervention condition, White guilt, and awareness of White privilege were also examined. Analyses revealed a main effect and large effect size for intervention condition. Results showed that education and entertainment conditions produced higher scores on a measure of White guilt compared with control and that the entertainment condition produced higher scores on awareness of White privilege compared with all other conditions. Mediation analyses revealed that observed changes in White guilt scores from pretest to posttest explained the relationship between intervention condition and awareness of White privilege. Findings did not support a causal ordering with changes in awareness of White privilege as a mediator of intervention condition and White guilt. Results suggest that brief multicultural education interventions are effective and that entertainment-oriented interventions may be particularly useful in terms of producing desired changes in White college students.