I sometimes wonder how much the fear of something is actually an additional problem to the thing itself. NOTE: I am not denying agism exists, I'm wondering about the additional problem of fear of agism. The fear that someone might be agist, might make you look at them judgmentally/suspiciously. If you look at your interviewer judgmentally/suspiciously they likely won't hire you, and they probably feel pretty suspicio…
While this might be interesting academically, I think if ageism is a problem that might generically scare candidates, then that too is the ageists fault for creating that culture of policy, and not a candidate's fault for sincerely being worried about something that is actually worth worrying about. We could say something similar about racism. "How much of a factor the fear of racism is, compared to racism itself..."…
So, within the scenario above, racism can take one toll or many tolls. And this is on the individual level, wherein people operate from day to day. They need a job. It would seem that being able to reset expectations, forgive, forbear, and go into the subsequent 3 interviews would be the ideal strategy to achieve success in job hunting, and prevent the racist from doing the most damage.
Since you mentioned 2nd order effects: how much do the 2nd order effects recreate/reinforce the first order effects? This would be another psychological survey I would be interested in.
If someone is fearful of racists, how many people are likely to become more racist as a result of this fear ( either themselves or people they come in contact with )? Isn't racism based on fear in the first place? Fear of other races? ( and therefore a reaction to fight or flight arbitrarily based on race? )
Batman: "Gee Robbin, I notice you are afraid when you are around people of other races" Robbin: "Well it's because I think they're racist against me" slap Batman: "Robbin you are becoming the thing you fear the most!"