“Bias and prejudice are attitudes to be kept in hand, not attitudes to be avoided” – Charles Curti
Moreover, attitudes have two levels: explicit attitudes and implicit attitudes. Explicit attitudes are conscious, intentional, and are influence verbal and nonverbal behaviors. For example, if someone reports that they believe all races are equal, that is an explicit attitude. Conversely, implicit attitudes are unconscious and involuntary and are more associated with nonverbal behaviors only. For example, someone may report the explicit attitude that all races are equal, but then may unconsciously act nervous around someone of another race. Implicit behaviors are an important focus of changing attitudes as they lead to more subtle forms of discrimination (Devine, Forscher, Austin, & Cox, 2012). One of social psychology’s biggest questions, and the topic of this blog, is whether we can employ strategies to change or shift the attitudes of people for the better. Specifically, this blog will address what the current research suggests about changing attitudes with regard to racial prejudice.
Conditioning Anti-Bias
It is suggested that implicit biases, such as a racial preference (e.g. white over black), are socially learned through classical conditioning (Fiske, 2014). Classical conditioning, as popularly studied by Ivan Pavlov, shows that implicit racial biases can be learned when certain words (e.g. “dangerous”) or actions (e.g. moving to the other side of the street from someone of another race) are paired with a person of a certain race over the course of their life (Fiske, 2014). Thus, several researchers created interventions to assess if we could condition “anti-bias” or use the methods of pairing a race, such as black, with words such as “good” (Lai et al., 2014; Stewart, Latu, Branscombe, & Denney, 2010). However, it was discovered that this would not be enough to change implicit attitudes and so they also paired the biased race, or white, with words such as “bad”. This dual-pairing conditioned over multiple trials, reduced implicit racial bias (Lai et al., 2014). Although it initially doesn’t seem practical to continually pair “black” with “good” and “white” with “bad”, this can easily be translated to advertising and popular media. If advertisers used more messages conditioning these “anti-bias” pairings, it may help reduce societal bias.
Counter-Stereotyping
Another intervention developed and tested, used counter-stereotype examples to reduce implicit bias. In one study, participants were presented a story in the first person where they were brutally assaulted by a white man and then rescued by a black man (Lai et al., 2014). These ran counter to the stereotype that black men are typically “dangerous” or “criminals” and that white men are “good” and “heroes”. This intervention was one of the most powerful in reducing implicit bias. Furthermore, a similar counter-stereotyping intervention used in conjunction with bias education reduced implicit bias 8 weeks later (Devine et al., 2012). Thus, media portrayals of counter-stereotypes may be extremely important in reducing implicit bias, and more importantly that counter-stereotypes are not just positive counter-stereotypes of black people, but also negative counter-stereotypes of white people (Lai et al., 2014). However, it is important to note that this could reverse biases instead of creating more equal views.
Increasing Contact
Increasing contact with people outside of your racial group has also been shown to decrease racial biases (Devine et al., 2012). In particular, one study suggested learning more about individuals of a racial group helped to reduce stereotyping inferences about the overall group (Devine et al., 2012). Most importantly, increased contact with a stereotyped group was shown to increase explicit concern about discrimination, which has been linked to decreasing explicit racial attitudes, but also increases the effectiveness of interventions targeting implicit racial biases (Devine et al., 2012; Stewart et al., 2010). It also makes them more likely to confront others about prejudice, which decreases the social acceptability of explicit racial bias (Swim et al., 2009).
Can We Change Racial Attitudes?
Overall, changing racial bias is extremely difficult, but possible. It should also be noted that while the previous studies focused on implicit biases between white and black people, they found these reductions transferred to other races as well (Lai et al., 2014). Increasing positive associations with races of less privilege and negative associations with groups of more privilege may be possible through advertising (Stewart et al., 2010). Popular media including books, television, and movies can utilize counter-stereotypes to decrease implicit racial bias (Lai et al., 2014). Moreover, increasing contact between groups by increasing diversity in schools and other public locations so people are more likely to meet and talk with people of other races is likely to increase the effectiveness of other interventions on implicit biases and decrease stereotyping inferences (Devine et al., 2012). Although the research discussed above is promising with regard to changing implicit bias, it must also be recognized that it is still extremely important to intervene on explicit biases. Furthermore, the connection between implicit attitudes and discriminatory behavior is much weaker than explicit attitudes. While it is important to remain optimistic with regard to reducing racial bias, it is important to maintain effort to reduce our own biases and to understand the best methods of intervention (Swim et al., 2009).
- Devine, P. G., Forscher, P. S., Austin, A. J., & Cox, W. T. L. (2012). Long-term reduction in implicit race bias: A prejudice habit-breaking intervention. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(6), 1267–1278. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.06.003
- Lai, C. K., Marini, M., Lehr, S. A., Cerruti, C., Shin, J.-E. L., Joy-Gaba, J. A., … Nosek, B. A. (2014). Reducing implicit racial preferences: I. A comparative investigation of 17 interventions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(4), 1765–1785. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036260
- Stewart, T. L., Latu, I.M., Branscombe, N.R., & Denney, H.T. (2010). Yes we can!: Prejudice reduction through seeing (inequality) and believing (in social change). Psychological Science. 21(11), 1557-62. doi: 10.1177/0956797610385354
- Swim, J.K., Gervais, S.J., Pearson, N., & Stangor, C. (2009). Managing the message: Using social influence and attitude change Strategies to confront interpersonal discrimination. Butera, F., & Levine, J.M. (Eds.). Coping with Minority Status: Responses to Exclusion and Inclusion. New York: Cambridge University Press.