December 1, 2021
Reducing Prejudice:
Beyond media interventions, what about face-to-face contact with people of different ethnic groups?
Articulated by Gordon Allport (1954):
prejudice/negative stereotypes of other groups may be reduced by personal contact with members of the group when that contact…
Is there real world evidence that contact reduces prejudice?
Combining hundreds of studies, Pettigrew and Tropp 2(006) find it does, but consider this study…
Researchers surveyed 3806 people in France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and West Germany in 1988. They found that self-reported contact with members of immigrant outgroups was strongly associated with more positive evaluations of those groups.
Does contact cause less prejudice?
Focus on results of studies where contact is randomly assigned and prejudice measured at least 1 day later.
Overall:
New research explores sustained contact in realistic settings:
Caste in Rural India
Can contact reduce prejudice, foster cooperation?
An Experiment:
Assign young men, aged 14 to 30 to play in local cricket leagues
Two forms of contact:
collaborative: mixed caste teams have contact in collaboration for common goal, “equal” status, sanctioned (official league)
adversarial: if opponents are other caste, then contact is toward opposing goals
Collaborative contact increases cross-caste friendship
Adversarial contact reduces cross-caste friendship
Collaborative contact increases positive cross-caste interactions
Adversarial contact reduces positive cross-caste interactions
Key findings:
Teach For America
Does participation in TFA reduce racial prejudice, increase empathy with racial outgroup?
A big problem:
Who joins TFA? How are they different from people who don’t join?
Natural Experiment:
Score cut off affects participation in TFA: