Research on Microaggressions and Their Impacts Assesses Neither Microaggressions nor Their Impacts

Draft of An Article on Verge of Journal Submission

It has only taken me 40+ years in academia to have written a short, readable, academic article. Presented here is a draft of an article that was invited for a special issue of a journal on the politicization of psychotherapy. There is only a little psychotherapy here, because I told them I have no expertise in it (though my co-author certainly does), and asked if, instead, I could write a critique of research on microaggressions, which are prominently promoted as important and scientifically well-established by clinical and counseling psychologists. They are completely wrong.

Luckily for me, the special issue editors gave me the green light to do the article. As a draft, this is likely to change because journals almost never accept initially submitted articles as-is. They may reject it outright, in which case I’d consider revising it to address their reasons for doing so. Even if they do not reject it, the most one can usually hope for after an initial submission is a “revise and resubmit,” which means, more or less, “we kinda liked your paper but some of it sucks and we are not sure if you can deal with the stuff that sucks, but we’ll give you a chance and re-evaluate the paper then.” So the paper is likely to change.

Nonetheless, this is functionally like a “preprint.” Preprints are … just this. Articles written but not yet published, sometimes under review at journals. I do not think I have ever seen a preprint posted on Substack but … so what?

Criticisms on anything from the key ideas to our wrongly claiming “no studies have ever…” (maybe we missed something; I do not think so, but you never know what you don’t know) to typos are invited and welcome.

Without further ado…

---

Research on Microaggressions and Their Impacts Assesses Neither Microaggressions nor Their Impacts

Lee Jussim, Rutgers

Richard J. McNally, Harvard University

ABSTRACT (for nonacademics, you can treat this as a sorta tl;dr or the Summary Up Front that you sometimes see in my posts).

We review and critically evaluate the ability of the empirical research on microaggressions to substantiate the major common scholarly claims about them. We find that the literature exclusively addresses perceptions of microaggressions rather than microaggressions per se, and that it has not even attempted to address the role of racism. Scholarship claiming to identify negative “impacts” of microaggressions fails to do so because: 1. It assesses perceptions of microaggressions rather than microaggressions per se; and 2. It has assessed correlates of perceptions of microaggressions without assessing the causal processes producing those correlations. We conclude that, after 50 years of scholarship on microaggressions, none of the main claims about them have been scientifically substantiated.

---

Microaggressions refer to subtle intergroup insults that instantiate and stem from racism (Sue et al., 2007). A microaggression, therefore, is a racist act committed by a perpetrator directed at some target. Most definitions also characterize them as caused by either intentional or unconscious prejudice (e.g. Pierce, 1970; Sue et al. 2007; Williams, 2020). Clinical and counseling psychologists have been among the most active participants in the theoretical and empirical debates regarding microaggressions (e.g., Lilienfeld, 2017; Sue et al., 2007; Williams, 2020). Concern about the sensitivities of minoritized individuals has prompted training programs to detect microaggressions. In this article, we critically evaluate research on microaggressions and address clinical implications.

The Vast Majority of Research on Microaggressions Does Not Address Microaggressions

Nearly all empirical research framed as addressing “microaggressions” assesses subjective perceptions of microaggression. The problem should be obvious. Realities are not revealed by assessing perceptions. Elections are not determined by asking the candidates how many votes they believe they received; they are assessed by counting votes. Scientists do not assess global warming by asking people if they feel warmer; they assess global temperatures. To state what should be obvious (but is obviously not obvious in the case of research on microaggressions), subjective reports of experiences with external realities are not the same phenomena as those external realities.

Accordingly, it is not possible to reach conclusions about microaggressions based solely on studies of subjective perceptions of microaggression experiences. Yet microaggression advocates routinely promulgate such conclusions. Consider a recent systematic review of research on “microaggressions” (Newman, Chrispal, Dunwoodie & Macaulay 2025). It identified 26 qualitative studies – all assessed self-reported “experiences” with being the target of microaggressions. It also identified 14 quantitative studies using a survey research design. In all cases, the survey questions assessed self-reported experiences with microaggressions. Although Newman et al. (2025) acknowledged that the research they reviewed primarily assessed perceptions held by targets, throughout the paper, they referred to the research they reviewed as addressing microaggressions rather than “perceptions of microaggressions.”

Such studies provided no direct information about microaggressions. Whether they provide any indirect evidence regarding microaggressions would require an assessment of the relationship of microaggressive behaviors of actual transgressors with scales purporting to assess experiences with microaggressions. None of the studies in their review even attempted this, and, as far as we know, it has never been done in other studies.

Microaggression Questionnaires Do Not Assess Microaggressions

To highlight these and other limitations to measures of perceptions of microaggressions, we focus on one (Nadal, 2011) that was characterized by a prominent microaggression advocate (Williams, 2020, p.13) as “Another important measure of microaggression frequency” (the same problems characterize all microaggression questionnaires we know of (see, e.g., Newman et al.’s [2025] review)). Nadal’s (2011) microaggression questionnaire exclusively measured targets’ subjective reports of the frequency with which they have experienced various events simply labeled as “microaggressions” by Nadal (such as “Someone avoided eye contact with me because of my race.”). Nadal’s (2011) studies did not test:

1. Whether the reported experiences correspond to the behaviors of supposed perpetrators

2. The assumed motivation for the supposedly microaggressive behaviors are correct (e.g., based in racism)

3. The supposedly microaggressive behaviors were motivated by unconscious racism.

Furthermore, Nadal (2011) found that people reported experiencing the purported microaggressions as extremely infrequent (typically no more than three times in the past six months). Therefore, even if one accepts the dubious proposition that subjective reports of the frequency of experiences with microaggressions over the past six months are valid measures of microaggressions, this disconfirmed claims that microaggressions are frequent (Sue et al., 2007; Williams, 2020). Nearly all studies of “microaggressions” reviewed by Newman et al. (2025) focused on “lived experience,” used versions of Nadal’s (2011) questionnaire, or used the Racial Microaggressions Scale (Torres-Harding, Andrade Jr, & Romero Diaz, 2012), which also exclusively assesses subjective self-reports about experiences with microaggressions.

Correlation Still Does Not Mean Causation

It is possible, yet extremely difficult, to establish causality on the basis of correlations (e.g., Rohrer, 2018). Doing so requires, among other things, articulating, testing, and confirming explicit causal models of processes, testing them against alternative models, and finding more support for the hypothesized model than the alternatives. This has never been done in any research on microaggressions. Two additional hurdles to establishing causality on the basis of correlations are confounders and lack of representative samples (Rohrer, 2018). Both problems characterize microaggression research. For example, consider a study (Kanter et al., 2017) described by Williams (2020, p. 12) as providing “...important empirical support for something that diversity researchers knew all along-microaggressive acts are rooted in racist beliefs.”

Kanter et al. (2017) found that measures of racism correlated about r=.4 with their measure of microaggressions. In contrast to most other microaggression research, a strength of their measure was that, instead of assessing subjective reports of experiences with microaggressions, it assessed White participant’s self-reported tendencies to “microaggress” (why this is in quotes will soon be apparent). This sounds like strong evidence until one closely considers the study’s methods.

First, one cannot infer a particular causal direction from a correlation However, even stipulating the unevidenced assumption that racism did cause responses on their “microaggression” scale, examining the features of that scale is informative.

Kanter et al. (2017) gave participants interracial scenarios in which they were to imagine themselves interacting. Participants were then asked questions about what they might think or say in the situation. For example, they were asked if they would think or say, “‘Did you get into school through a minority scholarship?” (presumed to be a microaggression). Response options were: 1 (‘‘I wouldn’t think it at all’’), 2 (‘‘I would think it but definitely wouldn’t say/do it’’), 3 (‘‘I would think it but probably not say/do it’’), 4 (‘‘I would think it, and I might say/do it’’), and 5 (‘‘I would think it and probably would say/do it’’). Participants responded to 30 such questions, which were summed to form the “microaggression” scale that correlated about .4 with racism measures.

The validity of participants’ responses was not empirically evaluated, so whether they would actually say or think in a manner consistent with their responses is unknown. If the responses were invalid, the measure provides no information about microaggressions. If the responses were valid, few participants would commit microaggressions. Responses of 1 and 2 are definitely not microaggressions (thinking something is not a microaggression). Even response option 3 indicates they claimed they would probably not verbalize the microaggression. For their White participants, 23 items had means below 2 and only one had a mean above 3. Standard deviations for most items were around 1.0 If the responses were valid, Kanter et al.’s (2017) data few of their participants would commit microaggressions.

The evidence of racism causing “microaggressions” is even weaker than this suggests. Only 14 of the 30 “microaggressions” correlated with racism at p < .05, meaning that 16 were statistically indistinguishable from zero. If “based on racism” is an empirical hypothesis, more than half the items failed to support it. Compounding this issue, no method was used to account for the large number of statistical tests (conventional methods would involve requiring a lower p-value threshold, rendering even fewer of the items “significantly” correlated with racism).

Last, it was a small-scale study (33 black and 118 white students) from a college in Kentucky. These numbers are so small and unrepresentative of any population that the entire study should be viewed as preliminary rather than as establishing important generalizable scientific facts. Indeed, its title begins with “A Preliminary Report…” Our view is that two necessary conditions for justifiably considering research “important” are confidence in its replicability and in the validity of the conclusions. This single small study, which has never been replicated, does not justify such confidence.

Kanter et al.’s (2017) correlational study has then be used in major reviews of microaggressions research to unjustifiably claim support for the assumption that racism causes microaggressions. For example, Williams’s (2020, p. 12) has a section header: “Microaggressions are Caused (at Least in Part) by Racial Biases.” The section reviews Kanter et al., (2017) and other research she described as similar, which, as we have already shown, provided correlations of their measure of “microaggressions” with racism rather than experimental evidence of a causal effect.

Sometimes, causal claims are slipped in more subtly. Except when discussing objects smashing into one another, “impact” is one of those synonyms of “cause” that are used by researchers to avoid the obviously red flag that would be raised by using “cause” when referring to correlational studies, and still make (unjustified) causal claims on the basis of such studies (Corneille et al., 2023). For example, on On page 15 of Williams (2020), another section header declares, “Microaggressions Exert an Adverse Impact on Mental Health” and this appears in the first paragraph: “... microaggressions and the largely overlapping construct termed everyday racial discrimination are in fact associated with many negative mental health consequences…” followed by a long list of correlational studies. “Associated with” is correct; “adverse impacts” are not established by studies assessing “associations.”

Experimental Studies of Microaggressions and Their Limitations

Newman et al.’s (2025) systematic review identified five experimental studies in which researchers created vignettes involving ostensible microaggressions and assessed third party reactions. For example, Kim, Block & Nguyen (2019) created vignettes involving an interaction between two people capturing what they characterized as “microaggressions” to 65 graduate students. Participants provided their opinions about the main “perceived negative effect on the targets.” The study did not assess actual effects on actual targets.

Whether their vignettes meet the definition of microaggressions as subtle insults is also doubtful. For example, in one vignette, an employee overheard a manager refer to Chinese people as “Chinks.” This is a blatant racist slur, not a microaggression. The vignettes were created in consultation with what they referred to as “subject matter experts,” so that the use of a vignette that is blatant rather than subtle racism casts doubt on the expertise of these experts.

Similar limitations characterize other experimental studies of “microaggressions” (e.g., Basford, Offermann & Behrend, 2014; Offermann, Basford, Graebner, Jaffer, De Graaf, & Kaminsky, 2014). Rather than basing vignettes on behaviors empirically demonstrated to stem from subtle or unconscious racism, the vignettes were typically developed based on consultations with “microaggression experts.” This raises questions about the credibility of experts who claim expertise without a scientific base of studies identifying actual microaggressions.

Clinical Implications

We are not the first to critique research on microaggressions (e.g. Cantu & Jussim, 2021; Lilienfeld, 2017). Lilienfeld concluded the field “is far too underdeveloped on the conceptual and methodological fronts to warrant real-world application” (2017, p. 138), a conclusion consistent with those of Cantu & Jussim (2021) and the present review. Accordingly, he called for a moratorium on training programs teaching people how to identify microaggressions and policies designed to identify and punish alleged perpetrators.

Two years after Lilienfeld’s death, an article listed eight eminent scholars in psychology’s history whose work had “advanced racism” (Williams, Faber, & Duniya, 2022). Each name was accompanied by the psychologist’s “representative racist belief.” Lilienfeld appeared in this rogue’s gallery for arguing that: “Racial microaggressions are unproven and probably not harmful.”

A reply to Williams et al. (2022), co-signed by 63 social psychologists, clinical psychologists, and psychiatrists from around the world (McNally et al., 2024) pointed out how the accusation that Lilienfeld was advancing racism is traceable to the controversial concept of microaggressions itself. Microaggression scholarship often is framed as anti-racist (e.g., Williams, et al., 2022). In this perspective, opposing anti-racism is racist, so that criticizing microaggression research is racist. Thus, microaggression scholarship has a peculiar form of insulation against refutation. Critiques of the theory, being “racist,” count as further support for the phenomenon. Consistent with our “peculiar form of insulation” analysis, in a reply (Faber & Williams, 2024),pointed to the long list of co-signers being nearly all white males as if that somehow was relevant to refuting the substance of their critique.

This rhetorical move – accusations of promoting racism for the act of criticizing microaggression scholarship – both violates and risks short-circuiting the type of organized skepticism that Merton (1942/1973) argued is one of the pillars on which scientific validity and credibility rests. There is a long and ugly history of shoddy “science” being produced when a scientific community is cowed into silence through either repressive authorities or conformity induced by fear of public denunciations (Salmon & Jussim, 2025).

The many limitations of microaggression research means that it is not ready to be used to design real world or therapeutic interventions. The goals of psychotherapy should often include facilitating resilience and well-being. Improved social relations is one of the main outcomes clients value in psychotherapy (Ladmanová et al., 2025). Whereas helping clients cope with experiences of bigotry is appropriate for therapy, leading clients to interpret ambiguous situations as manifestations of bigotry risks doing more harm than good. Rather than facilitating constructive social interactions, it is likely to induce anger and resentment (Jagdeep et al., 2024). Whether therapy that induces clients to see ambiguous interactions as microaggressions leads to better long term outcomes than does therapy that cultivates interpersonal generosity, is an empirical question, that, as far as we know, has never been addressed. We predict the opposite, that cultivating what Haidt (2017) termed “generosity of spirit” is, in general, likely to produce better psychotherapeutic outcomes than cultivating a cognitive mindset that sees hostility in ambiguous interactions.

Conclusion

Despite 50 years of scholarship on microaggressions, the main claims about them have not been empirically demonstrated. Much is known about subjective self-reported experiences as measured by dubious questionnaires of unknown validity that may or may not assess perceptions of “microaggressions,” and the correlates of these measures. Correlations do not demonstrate “impact.” No studies have attempted to assess whether racism causes the specific behaviors labeled as microaggressions by “experts” and advocates.

Experimental research framed as addressing microaggressions instead assesses subjective perceptions of acts that experts have deemed “microaggressions,” even though such acts often do not fit the definition of microaggressions. Conclusions about “impacts” of “microaggressions” (measured by subjective self-reports of experiences rather than by measuring microaggressive behaviors) are based entirely on cross-sectional, correlational studies that have not even attempted to identify, let alone test, specific causal models. To date, the major claims of microaggression advocates have not been subject to empirical test. Although an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, it is also no evidence whatsoever for the main claims of microaggression advocates.

---

References

Basford, T. E., Offermann, L. R., & Behrend, T. S. (2014). Do you see what I see? Perceptions of gender microaggressions in the workplace. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 38(3), 340-349.

Cantu, E., & Jussim, L. (2021). Microaggressions, questionable science, and free speech. Texas Review of Law & Politics, 26, 217.

Corneille, O., Havemann, J., Henderson, E. L., IJzerman, H., Hussey, I., Orban de Xivry, J. J., ... & Lotter, L. D. (2023). Beware ‘persuasive communication devices’ when writing and reading scientific articles. ELife, 12, e88654.

Faber, S. & Williams, M. (2024). Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly. The Cognitive Behaviour Therapist. Comment, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-cognitive-behaviour-therapist/article/being-an-antiracist-clinician/29F05F9DFA520500DAD3C5A3FCBEBAF9#comments

Haidt, J. (2017). The unwisest idea on campus: Commentary on Lilienfeld (2017). Perspectives on Psychological Science,12(1), 176-177.

Jagdeep, A., Jagdeep, A., Lazarus, S., Zecher, M., Fedida, O., Fihrer, G.,…,Viswanathan, I. (2024). Instructing animosity: How DEI pedagogy produces the hostile attribution bias. Network Contagion Research Institute report. https://networkcontagion.us/reports/instructing-animosity-how-dei-pedagogy-produces-the-hostile-attribution-bias/

Kanter, J. W., Williams, M. T., Kuczynski, A. M., Manbeck, K. E., Debreaux, M., & Rosen, D. C. (2017). A preliminary report on the relationship between microaggressions against Black people and racism among White college students. Race and Social Problems, 9, 291-299.

Kim, J. Y. J., Block, C. J., & Nguyen, D. (2019). What’s visible is my race, what’s invisible is my contribution: Understanding the effects of race and color-blind racial attitudes on the perceived impact of microaggressions toward Asians in the workplace. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 113, 75-87.

Ladmanová, M., Řiháček, T., Timulak, L., Jonášová, K., Kubantová, B., Mikoška, P., ... & Elliott, R. (2025). Client-identified outcomes of individual psychotherapy: a qualitative meta-analysis. The Lancet Psychiatry, 12(1), 18-31.

Lilienfeld, S. O. (2017). Microaggressions: Strong claims, inadequate evidence. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(1), 138-169.

McNally, R. J., Abramovitch, A., Abramowitz, J. A., Adam-Troian, J., Bailey, J. M., Barlow, D. H., . . . Wood, J. M. (2024). Comment on “Being an Anti-Racist Clinician.” The Cognitive Behaviour Therapist. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-cognitive- behaviourtherapist/article/being-an-antiracistclinician/ 29F05F9DFA520500DAD3C5A3FCBEBAF9#comments

Merton, R.K. (1942/1973). “The normative structure of science”, in: R.K. Merton, The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. The University of Chicago Press.

Nadal, K. L. (2011). The Racial and Ethnic Microaggressions Scale (REMS): Construction, reliability, and validity. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 58(4), 470.

Newman, A., Chrispal, S., Dunwoodie, K., & Macaulay, L. (2025). Hidden bias, overt impact: A systematic review of the empirical literature on racial microaggressions at work. Journal of Business Ethics, 200, 753-772.

Offermann, L. R., Basford, T. E., Graebner, R., Jaffer, S., De Graaf, S. B., & Kaminsky, S. E. (2014). See no evil: Color blindness and perceptions of subtle racial discrimination in the workplace. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 20(4), 499.

Pierce, C. (1970). Offensive mechanisms. In F. B. Barbour (Ed.), The Black seventies (pp. 265–282). Boston, MA: Porter Sargent.

Rohrer, J. M. (2018). Thinking clearly about correlations and causation: Graphical causal models for observational data. Advances in Methods And Practices In Psychological Science, 1(1), 27-42.

Salmon, C. & Jussim, L. (2025). Lysenkoism then and now: A cautionary tale of censorious social norms. In The Free Inquiry Papers (R. Maranto, C. Salmon, L. Jussim, & S. Satel, editors), pp. 130-142. American Enterprise Institute Publishing.

Sue, D. W., Capodilupo, C. M., Torino, G. C., Bucceri, J. M., Holder, A., Nadal, K. L., & Esquilin, M. (2007). Racial microaggressions in everyday life: implications for clinical practice. American psychologist, 62(4), 271-286.

Torres-Harding, S. R., Andrade Jr, A. L., & Romero Diaz, C. E. (2012). The Racial Microaggressions Scale (RMAS): a new scale to measure experiences of racial microaggressions in people of color. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 18(2), 153.

Williams, M. T. (2020). Microaggressions: Clarification, evidence, and impact. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(1), 3-26.

Williams, M. T., Faber, S. C., & Duniya, C. (2022) Being an anti-racist clinician. The Cognitive Behaviour Therapist, 12(e19). doi:10.1017/S1754470X22000162

Williams, M. T., Kanter, J. W., & Ching, T. H. (2018). Anxiety, stress, and trauma symptoms in African Americans: Negative affectivity does not explain the relationship between microaggressions and psychopathology. Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities, 5(5), 919-927.