Bad News and Good News about Racial Prejudice

Previous research had underscored the anxiety African-Americans experience regarding social interactions with nonblacks “based on fears of rejection and stigmatization,” noted the study’s authors, who were from Rice and Emory University and the University of British Columbia. “The present research suggests that such fears may not be unfounded.” African-Americans who look more stereotypically black “are even more likely to experience this rejection,” the authors wrote.

A “distressing implication” of the findings, the authors added, was “the role they may play in perpetuating cycles of intergroup avoidance and segregation.”

But in the same issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology there was reason for hope. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin reported on an intervention they’d developed to combat implicit racial bias.

Implicit biases are powerful “precisely because people lack personal awareness of them,” the authors observed. Presuming that this kind of prejudice is “a habit that can be broken,” the researchers first presented the intervention group with information on the prevalence of implicit biases and on how they work. Then they offered strategies for countering stereotypical responses—such as taking the perspective, in the first person, of the member of a stereotyped group, and seeking opportunities to engage in positive interactions with out-group members.

The 12-week study showed “dramatic reductions” in the prejudice of those who received the intervention. There was no reduction in bias in a control group whose subjects were given no education or training about stereotypes.

Among the observations of those in the intervention group while they were in the study:

“I was riding the bus and an older black gentleman sat in the seat next to me. I was about to sit closer to the wall but then realized that this was a stereotypical response and stayed where I was.”

“I had to go get a drug test for my new job. While I was in the clinic a black woman walked up to the desk and the receptionist assumed she was there for a drug test also. I thought that was stereotyping on her part and I was right. The woman was there because she was injured at work.”

The researchers wrote that their data “provide evidence demonstrating the power of the conscious mind to intentionally deploy strategies to overcome implicit bias. As such, these findings raise the hope of solving a problem that has long vexed social scientists—how to reduce race-based discrimination.”

 

Article Appeared @http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2013/02/21/bad-news-and-good-news-about-racial-prejudice

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