Examining pre-service teachers’ color-blind racial ideology, emotion regulation, and inflexibility with stigmatizing thoughts about race

•Emotion regulation mediated color-blind racial ideology and inflexibility.•Emotion regulation moderated color-blind racial ideology and inflexibility.•Emotion regulation is important in influencing stigmatizing thoughts about race. In this study, we examined the relationship between 159 predominately White pre-service teachers’ color-blind racial attitudes, emotion regulation, and psychological inflexibility with stigmatizing thoughts about race. Results indicated strong relationships between color-blind racial ideology and psychological inflexibility with stigmatizing thoughts about race. Specifically, emotion regulation difficulties (suppression strategies) served as a mediator between color-blind racial ideology (unawareness of racial privilege) and psychological inflexibility with stigmatizing thoughts about race. In addition, emotion regulation difficulties (lack of emotional clarity) served as a moderator between color-blind racial ideology (blatant racial issues) and psychological inflexibility with stigmatizing thoughts about race. Similarly, emotion regulation difficulties (impulse control difficulties) served as a moderator between color-blind racial ideology (institutional discrimination) and psychological inflexibility with stigmatizing thoughts about race. The study’s overall findings highlight pre-service teachers’ difficulties with regulating their emotions in racial situations as well as how this difficulty in turn influences their ability to change negative thoughts regarding other racial groups. The study has implications for how pre-service teachers regulate racial emotions in the classroom as well as how they may potentially interact with racially diverse students.