Willing and able: How internal motivation and failure help to overcome prejudice.

Internal motivation to behave nonprejudiced reduces automatic and controlled prejudice. The present studies examined the impact of internal motivation to behave nonprejudiced on reactions to one's failure to behave nonprejudiced. In Study 1 higher levels of internal motivation led to more negative self-directed affect when failing to behave nonprejudiced, but not when failing in other domains. In Study 2 higher levels of internal motivation led to less prejudice after failure to behave nonprejudiced, but not in a non-failure condition. These findings suggest that failure to behave nonprejudiced plays a key role for highly internally motivated individuals in learning to regulate prejudice successfully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]