Reducing prejudice - contributing to society from social approach Flashcards
EDUCATING CHILDREN TO CHANGE ATTITUDES
→ EDUCATING CHILDREN TO CHANGE ATTITUDES - Educating children with notions of tolerance and providing them with an insight into the causes and effects of prejudice can help reduce prejudice.
→ JANE ELLIOT - conducted ‘blue eyes’ study on her classes to teach them what it felt like to be the victim of prejudice. Interviews with the children as adults revealed that the study had inoculated them against discriminatory behaviour
→ Education can reduce prejudice if it is carried out at a social level and is seen to be accepted by the majority in society. → Education has its greater effect on the younger rather than the old generation. Jane Elliot demonstrates this and all her participants felt they had learned invaluable lessons regarding prejudice → Jane Elliot’s study has been criticized for breaking ethical guidelines. The children or parents did not give informed consent to take part; they were deceived about the nature of the investigation and all the participants were clearly caused distress and comfort.
INCREASED CONTACT
→ INCREASED CONTACT - Meeting members of other social groups prejudice by reducing the effect of stereotypes. This occurs as → Inter group similarities are perceived → Out group differences are noted.
→ DEUTSCH AND COLLINS (1951) - did a study looking at contact between different groups in two housing projects. They found there was less prejudice in the integrated housing project , so contact does seem to reduce prejudice. Presumably the people in the housing were of equal status.
→ SHERIF - In the Robbers cave study found inter-froup contact alone was insufficient to reduce prejudice between competing groups. Increased contact seems to reduce prejudice of group stereotypes. Contact only change stereotypes if → it is between individuals of equal status → Individuals are seen as representative of their group.
SUPER ORDINATE GOALS
→ SUPER ORDINATE GOALS - Making groups work together to achieve ‘SUPER ORDINATE GOALS’
→ SHERIF ET AL (1961) - Sherif significantly reduced inter goup hostility between two groups of children, ‘EAGLES’ and ‘RATTLERS’ by providing super-ordinate goals in the last phase of their Robbers Cave Experiment.
SUPER ORDINATE GOALS - 2
→ ARSON ET AL (1978) used ‘JIGSAW TECHNIQUE’ with mixed race classroom groups. Each child received a part of the whole assignment and was dependent on the other group to to perform well in it. Inter-racial liming and the performance if ethnic minorities was increased.
→ Although super-ordinate goals may force people
to work together in the classroom, there is no guarantee it will work when they leave. When children leave their jigsaw classrooms they may return to a prejudiced family or society.
→ Super-ordinate goals cannot always be set up between all groups and failure to achieve them
may result in worse prejudice. E.G. Being forced to work with someone you dislike may increase
prejudice.
→ There is evidence that superordinate goals do actually reduce prejudice and hostility. This is apparent in both the classic Sherif study and Aronson’s jigsaw technique.
