A recent study suggests that challenging someone about their prejudice toward one group may be a viable strategy for reducing their prejudice toward multiple minority groups. These findings were published in Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Previous studies have explored how confronting someone’s prejudice toward one group can reduce their use of stereotypes about that particular group. However, until now, no study had considered whether this exchange might reduce the use of stereotypes toward other stigmatized groups.
As study authors Kimberly E. Chaney and her team say, one approach suggests that people who are prejudiced toward one group tend to be prejudiced toward other victimized groups.
“Broadly, I was interested in learning how each person can contribute to fighting racism and sexism in their daily lives, and one way we can each do that is calling out prejudice when we hear or see it,” said Chaney, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut.
“Additionally, when you look at different forms of prejudices, there is a lot of overlap in where these attitudes come from and how they operate in society. Because we know confronting prejudice can feel challenging, we wanted to see if one small confrontation of prejudice might have a broader effect, motivating a perpetrator to mitigate their biases towards multiple groups.
Chaney and her fellow researchers devised three studies to explore the secondary transfer effects of prejudice confrontations for the first time.
An initial study involved 193 White participants who were split into two groups. Both groups completed a task designed to elicit negative stereotypes about Black Americans. Following the task, subjects in the experimental group were confronted by the experimenter regarding their use of stereotypes, for example, “I thought some of your answers seemed a little offensive . . . People shouldn’t use stereotypes, you know?”. The control group was not confronted.
A week later, all participants completed a second task which could elicit both Black and Latino stereotypes. The researchers found that the group who had been confronted for their use of negative Black stereotypes not only used fewer Black stereotypes one week later but also used fewer Latino stereotypes.
A second study following a similar design further found that subjects who were confronted for their use of negative Black stereotypes subsequently used fewer gender role stereotypes. Interestingly, they also used fewer positive Black stereotypes. As Chaney and team highlight, previous research suggests that confronting a person’s use of positive stereotypes can sometimes be poorly received and seen as nagging. Importantly, this finding suggests that by confronting negative stereotypes, one can simultaneously reduce both positive and negative stereotypes, while avoiding the negative appraisal.
Finally, a third study monitored subjects’ use of stereotypes during a fabricated social exchange. A day later, subjects were offered a second survey that included several stereotype trials and also measured their racial egalitarian motivation by asking how often in the past 24 hours they had caught themselves, “Focusing on being egalitarian toward people regardless of their race.”
It was found that those who were confronted for using gender role stereotypes later spent more time thinking about being egalitarian regarding race than those who were not confronted. Moreover, mediation analysis found that racial egalitarian thinking partly explained the relationship between being confronted and using fewer Black stereotypes.
“We know confronting prejudice is challenging, but we believe it is an important step in addressing prejudice in all its forms. We hope that knowing confronting prejudice can be an effective way to combat prejudice in society will make people more willing to step up when they can,” Chaney told PsyPost.
The researchers express that their three studies showcase the potential for confrontation as a strategy for reducing prejudice concerning a range of stigmatized groups and stereotypes.
However, Chaney noted that “there is still a lot we don’t understand about prejudice confrontations in natural interactions, how it should be done, what should be said, and when it will be most effective.”
“For example, should you try to explain to someone why what they said was racist or is a more straightforward, angry approach most effective at making someone consider their biases?”
The study, “The Breadth of Confrontations as a Prejudice Reduction Strategy”, was authored by Kimberly E. Chaney, Diana T. Sanchez, Nicholas P. Alt, and Margaret J. Shih.
