Reducing Prejudice Flashcards
Sherif et al.’s (1961) ‘Robber’s Cave’ study
> > Sherif was able to create hostility and prejudice - by introducing a scarce resource
Sherif et al.’s (1961) ‘Robber’s Cave’ study - reducing prejudice
Sherif asked whether having created this prejudice and discrimination - can they
reduce the hostility
» Thus ‘sheer contact’ is not enough
> They found that working together for a shared goal, somewhat diffused the hostility between the groups
> When friendship choices were measured - boys even suggested they had friends across the group divide
Sherif et al.’s (1961) ‘Robber’s Cave’ study - reducing prejudice - water supply
- The researchers informed the boys that the water supply had been sabotaged by vandals
- They had to pull a water cart with a tug of war rope - they could only pull this is both groups of boys worked together
» Created situations where the boys had to work in harmony for a shared
goal
» Boys from other groups even sat next to each other on the bus home - they still preferred people from their own group but held must less negative attitudes towards the out group
Sherif et al.’s (1961) ‘Robber’s Cave’ study - reducing prejudice - test ‘sheer contact’
- Many people in society suggest that prejudice towards other groups is largely do to ignorance and lack of understanding/lack of contact of different people
- Idea of ‘sheer contact’ is that - just putting people together should reduce ignorance and therefore a reduction in prejudice
- Therefore Sherif tested this by getting the two groups of boys to socialise together - however it was disastrous
- Arguments occurred during dinner, when they tried to watch a film together - clearly sheer contact is not enough, and if anything could escalate tensions
Introduction of Superordinate goal
> > Simply forcing the boys to interact causes fights/arguments but - creating
a shared positive goal in which both groups could benefit meant they worked together
Researchers introduced a superordinate goal
Created a positive goal relationship between the groups - where both
groups could benefit
One theory of reducing predudice is - sheer contact ✘ Stroebe et al (1988) argues against this
European work on foreign exchange students
- When people go to study abroad, they go there with stereotypes they have formed about the country they are visiting
- Measure these stereotypes before and after time in the country - you can observe whether spending time in the country influenced these stereotypes
- Stroebe et al (1988):- Looked at German students going to study in other contries e.g. the USA - stereotypes made by the foreign students become considerably more negative after spending time in the country
✘ This goes against ‘sheer contact theory’
- Furnham & Bochner (1986) - exchange students tend not to integrate
- English researchers report the same findings as Stroebe - with English students studying abroad and immediately seeking out other people similar to them
- They suggest that when we are in a new environment we have a natural tendency to seek out other people like us
Studies of school desegregation in the U.S.A.
- 1950s segregated America - different toilets, seats for different races
- Education was also segregated by race
- Eventually these segregations were abandoned - meaning children suddenly ended up being schooled with children of different ethnicities
- Did their attitudes to those children who they categorised differently change - was it -ve or +ve
Brewer & Miller (1984) - ‘re-segregation’
- report there was a lot of re-segregation
- In the playground, people would socialise with people of the same race
- unofficial re-segregation within a school setting
Schofield (1970;1986) - lack of ‘acquaintance potential’
- as re-segregation happened Schofield claimed there was a lack of acquaintance potential
- Although classrooms were mixed, as children were socialising with their same background, the children were’t able to socialise with other ethnicities and learn the background of other people
Schofield (1970;1986) - ‘banding’ leads
to re-segregation
- Banding - Schools divided classes into bands of ability e.g. for maths etc
- Therefore black children typically found themselves in the lower bands - this sparked people to draw conclusions that IQ is higher in white people
- However, these are not true, typically it was actually down to the fact that black children were coming from underfunded schools
- Coming from poorer areas
- White children had better SES so typically found themselves dominating the higher tiers of the bands - causing re-segregation
Stephan (1978) - meta-analysis
- Meta-analysis into the de-segregation
- little evidence that de-segregation was a good experience for black and latino children in America
- If anything it decreased their self-esteem
Negative impact of de-segregation
- Regardless of whether de-segregation impacted self-esteem
- It tended to make black/latino children feel worse
Aronson (1988) - minority students feel threatened in de-segregated environment
- May rebel against ‘white’ norms and values in education and develop counter-norms and values
- It’s possible that ethnic minorities turn to gangs and other ways of finding themselves value rather than school
Rupert Brown’s (1995) criticisms of de-segregation research - only during the school day
- De-segregation in school can have limitations and it appeared to be in a bubble
- Kids often bussed back to their own separate ethnic communities at the end of the day
- De-segregation only lasts from 9am-3pm during school then they are sent back to their segregated parts of town
- This is a problem if you are really trying to in still change in the way different groups of people see each other
Rupert Brown’s (1995) - Too much emphasis on short-term effects
Too much emphasis on short-term effects - expectation that simply putting children together from different backgrounds would have an instant effect
- Often if you really want to change the attitudes within people it involves long-term observations of gradual changes
Rupert Brown’s (1995) - A ‘no differences’ approach is stressed too much
- Expectation that the best approach is a no difference one - be blind to ethnicity
- People always say ‘I’m not prejudice, I’m blind to where people come from etc’
- However research shows it’s very hard to turn a blind eye to people that are different
- E.g. how we process faces - race effect
Rupert Brown’s (1995)
- Ideal contact conditions are rarely met
- The ideal conditions for contact to work are rarely met
Other examples of contact research - Northern Ireland
Trew (1986) Intergroup attitudes are no more positive in mixed schools.
Cairns (2003) – Contact hypothesis never been properly tested in N.I.
Trew (1986) Intergroup attitudes are no more positive in mixed schools.
- Northern Ireland - bitter rivalry and conflict between catholics and protestant
- Segregation
- Riots, shootings
- Reports various examples of governments of trying to build bridges between groups
- Identifying that the best way to do this
- Governments organised adventure trips involving children from both backgrounds
- When they returned to their segregated schools, they maintained the attitudes and hatred they previously had
Cairns (2003)
- Suggested that none of the schemes that the government implemented were informed by psychology
- Contact hypothesis never been properly tested in N.I.
Other examples of contact research - Israel
Ben-Ari & Amir (1986) - Arab & Jewish Israelis:-
- Various contact scenarios set up by the Israeli government to bring Muslims together with Jewish Israelis - in a setting where they could learn about each other
- They report some of the dangers of contact encounters
- Bringing two prejudice groups together can be dangerous as if it went wrong it could make things a lot worse - Ben-Ari & Amir (1986) report this:
(1) Sometimes the contact was seen as unpleasant
(2) Organisers often the most keen
(3) High expectations can be hard to meet
(4) Too many one-off contact attempts
(5) Too little preparation
(6) Language barriers
Contact Hypothesis
Proposes that increasing the exposure to members of various groups, can increase positive evaluations of the out-group and thus reduce prejudice.
- This hypothesis was especially appealing at the time it was introduced during the segregation of blacks and whites in USA.
Brophy (1949) ✓ Contact Hypothesis
- When whites and blacks were brought into contact in the work arena (after desegregation efforts began) - each group reported more positive feelings about the other
Allport (1954): The contact hypothesis
If we want to engineer situations which are most likely to reduce prejudice - what properties do these situations need
- Allport found that in many situations of mere contact - 50% of people felt more positive towards the out-group and 50% felt more negative
- Equal Status
- Common Goals
- Social & Institutional support
Allport (1954) - Equal Status
- For the best chance of it working, it requires people in contact settings to have equal status, because if you have people of different status you already have a problem
Allport (1954) - Common Goals
- We need to give them common goals to establish connections between groups
- This reflects RCT slightly
Allport (1954) - Social & Institutional support
- There needs to be wider social & Institutional support
- We should expect governments to play it’s role in reducing prejudice
Aronson et al.’s ‘Jigsaw Classroom’ (1978) - school is competitive
- A method of teaching with the intend of reducing prejudice
- In western societies, focusing on US, we set up schools as a too competitive learning environment
- > > School is a toxic environment as it is too competitive - it makes children compete rather than actually work together
- Therefore he suggested trialing a way of teaching to get over this
- You would deliberately construct the groups to contain opposing backgrounds
- Would not allow children to choose their own groups or re-segregation is likely to occur
22
Aronson et al.’s ‘Jigsaw Classroom’ (1978) - Change behaviour first
- Sometimes we try to change attitudes, however this is difficult hence when it fails we give up
- If we change behaviour, attitudes will then follow
- If we can get children of different backgrounds interacting in a way that is successful, they might then shift their attitudes
- Try and change the behaviour first
- Therefore Aronson is forcing to children to work with other children from other backgrounds in the hope that it will change their attitudes through cognitive dissonance reduction
Based on Cognitive Dissonance Theory - Festinger
> > Sometimes we are in the situation when we hold incompatible beliefs/attitudes this makes us feel uncomfortable
Cognitive Dissonance will encourage change in attitudes
They have a choice of shifting their attitudes in various ways - if we assume that we change our cognitive dissonance in a good way - this removes cognitive dissonance
Festinger - Cognitive Dissonance is an aversive state and it will motivate change
Based on Allport’s model of contact
Aronson devised collaborative learning techniques e.g. the Jigsaw model, based on Allport’s model of contact - and the criteria that it must meet
- The Jigsaw method demands cooperation, in order to learn the complete lesson e.g. children all learn different paragraphs on a topic
