Reducing Prejudice

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Chapter 14
Social Psychology
Learning Theories Like other attitudes, prejudice can be learned. Some prejudice
is learned as a result of personal conflicts with members of different groups, but people also develop negative attitudes toward groups with whom they have had little or no
contact. Learning theories suggest that children can pick up prejudices just by watching and listening to parents, peers, and others (Rohan & Zanna, 1996). There may even
be a form of biopreparedness (described in the learning chapter) that makes us especially likely to learn to fear people who are strangers or who look different from us
(Olson et al., 2001). Movies and television also portray ethnic or other groups in ways
that teach stereotypes and prejudice (Brehm et al., 2005). One study revealed that local
news coverage often gives the impression that African Americans are responsible for a
higher percentage of crimes than is actually the case (Romer, Jamieson, & deCoteau,
1998). No wonder so many young children know about the supposed negative characteristics of other ethnic groups, sometimes long before they ever meet people in those
groups (Baron & Banaji, 2006; Quintana, 1998).
Reducing Prejudice
Negative attitudes about members of ethnic
groups are often based on negative personal experiences or on the negative experiences and attitudes people hear
about from others. Cooperative contact
between equals can help promote mutual
respect and reduce ethnic prejudice.
FIGHTING ETHNIC PREJUDICE
contact hypothesis The idea that
stereotypes and prejudice toward a
group will diminish as contact with the
group increases.
One clear implication of the cognitive and learning theories of prejudice and stereotyping is that members of one group are often ignorant or misinformed about the characteristics of people in other groups. Before 1954, for example, most black and white
schoolchildren in the United States knew very little about one another because they
went to separate schools. Then the Supreme Court declared that segregated public
schools should be prohibited. In doing so, the court created a real-life test of the contact hypothesis, which states that stereotypes and prejudice toward a group will
decrease as contact with that group increases (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006).
Did the desegregation of U.S. schools confirm the contact hypothesis? In a few
schools, integration was followed by a decrease in prejudice, but in most places, either
no change occurred or prejudice actually increased (Oskamp & Schultz, 1998). However, these results did not necessarily disprove the contact hypothesis. In-depth studies
of schools with successful desegregation suggested that contact alone was not enough.
Integration reduced prejudice only when certain social conditions were created
(Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). First, members of the two groups had to be of roughly equal
social and economic status. Second, school authorities had to promote cooperation and
interdependence between ethnic groups by having members of the two groups work
together on projects that required reliance on one another to achieve success. Third,
the contact between group members had to occur on a one-to-one basis. It was only
when individuals got to know each other that the errors contained in stereotypes
became apparent. Finally, the members of each group had to be seen as typical and not
unusual in any significant way. When these four conditions were met, the children’s
attitudes toward one another became more positive.
Elliot Aronson (Aronson & Patnoe, 2000) describes a teaching strategy, called the
jigsaw technique, that helps create these conditions. Children from several ethnic groups
must work together on a team to complete a task, such as writing a report about a
famous person in history. Each child learns a separate piece of information about this
person, such as place of birth or greatest achievement, then provides this information
to the team (Aronson, 1990). Studies show that children from various ethnic groups
who take part in the jigsaw technique and other cooperative learning experiences display substantial reductions in prejudice toward other groups (e.g., Aronson, 1997). The
success reported in these studies has greatly increased the popularity of cooperative
learning exercises in U.S. classrooms. Such exercises may not eliminate all aspects of
ethnic prejudice in children, but they seem to be a step in the right direction.
Can friendly, cooperative, interdependent contact reduce the more entrenched forms
of prejudice seen in adults? It may. When equal-status adults from different ethnic
groups work jointly toward a common goal, bias and distrust can be reduced, particularly among those in ethnic majority groups (Tropp & Pettigrew, 2005). This is especially true if they come to see themselves as members of the same group rather than
as belonging to opposing groups (Dovidio, Kawakami, & Gaertner, 2000; Fiske, 2000).