The Surprisingly Simple Solution that Reduces Prejudice Between Groups
Charlottesville and its fallout has irreparably wounded the body politic in North America and beyond.
The situation was, and is dire. We need to be steadfast with the truth: hatred and the resistance to hatred, are not morally equivalent.
But how do we keep conflict from escalating into violence? If the worst has already happened, how do we heal these wounds? How do we bring groups that are prejudiced against one another, together?
In this post, I distill some insights from research that has sought to answer just these questions.
“To Improve Society, Spend More Time With People You Haven’t Met”
Although I’m fascinated by social innovations that tackle matters complex and complicated, I’m magnetically drawn to the simple and straightforward ones.
There is none so simple and straightforward as John Cage’s quote about making time for people you haven’t met.
I came across the quote back in 2002 or so. I was so inspired by it that I spent some time cutting a stencil of the quote and spray painting it onto a favourite t-shirt. I wanted to see what would happen if I wore it around town. I’m happy to report that my mini social experiment worked! I got a lot of compliments on the shirt, and made some new friends from it — and after all these years, one friend is still a bestie.
But I’ve always wondered just how scalable Cage’s simple idea is. If everyone spent more time with people they hadn’t met, would we actually improve society? What if these people we hadn’t met had “diametrically opposed” worldviews from ours? What then?
These questions have been swirling around in my brain for a long time now, but since Charlottesville they’ve become more urgent. And as I’m wont to do with matters that interest me, I find myself inadvertently searching for signs, way-posts, markers, and bread crumbs through the forest (in the form of an article here, or a book reference there), to try and get to the bottom of something. I read a lot but I have a hard time finishing books. I’m a dilettante for knowledge. I read across and between books, digging into indexes and following the trail of references from work to work. All the while picking up random tidbits here and there. I treat my library like an “anti-library” (as Taleb has called it) and have a hard time settling into a book for longer than about an hour.
So in my week of wandering research, I’ve come across some interesting theories, articles, and meta-analysis that confirm the truth of Cage’s simple dictum. And I’d like to share some insights gleaned by looking at one helpful study in particular.
“Intergroup Contact” Can Reduce Prejudice Between Groups
Thomas F. Pettigrew and Linda R. Tropp’s “A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory.” Oh, what a slog this one was (I have to admit I scanned the methodology section). But oh, what truths!
Before we begin, let’s clarify what a meta-analysis is:
“a method for systematically combining pertinent qualitative and quantitative study data from several selected studies to develop a single conclusion that has greater statistical power.” — For more details see the wiki.
Basically, it’s kind of like a huge literature review of similar studies that’s been synthesized and augmented using statistical methods.
Now, why were Pettigrew and Tropp doing this? To prove that Gordon W. Allport’s influential “Intergroup Contact Theory” was correct.
Back in 1954, Allport wrote The Nature of Prejudice and argued that interpersonal contact is one of the most effective ways to reduce prejudice between majority and minority groups (i.e. spending time with people you haven’t met, and who you are prejudiced against). But Allport argued that it wasn’t just contact alone that was needed. You also needed to design an encounter between groups by keeping four conditions in mind:
- Equal status between the groups in the situation;
- Common goals;
- Intergroup cooperation;
- Support of authorities, law, or custom.
Pettigrew and Tropp’s meta-analysis, however, found that all that’s needed for greater understanding between groups is just contact, plain and simple.
“Allport’s conditions are not essential for intergroup contact to achieve positive outcomes… we found that samples with no claims to these key conditions still show significant relationships between contact and prejudice.” (766)
Excepting the most hostile and threatening situations, contact was all that was needed.
I was happy to discover that a comprehensive meta-analysis of over 500 studies involving a quarter of a million people had demonstrated that the sentiment behind the Cage quote can be enough.
Daryl Davis concurs.
“Breed Liking”
But what if you did want to go further than just “making contact”?
What if you want to apply some strategic interaction design to the matter, and come up with interesting ways to facilitate contact that reduces prejudice between groups?
Although contact is all that’s needed, the meta-analysis did reveal a positive effect if Allport’s extra conditions were met. Put another way, it certainly doesn’t hurt to intentionally design contact between individuals and groups who are prejudiced against each other. It makes the encounter that much stronger.
To wit, here’s a 4-minute Heineken ad (made in collaboration with Human Library) demonstrating some of Allport’s conditions being applied through a carefully designed encounter between non-actors (how many conditions do you see at work?):
Some folks have taken issue with this ad (see Vox for a list of these) but to be honest, I’m nonplussed by the fact that this message is ultimately trying to sell me beer. Taking a page from Diedre McClosky’s book Bourgeois Virtues, Heineken’s desire for a better world is just an updated expression of a centuries-old tendency among the bourgeois to promote virtuous behavior (as an intended or unintended side-effect of their commerce). It’s what you’d expect any good capitalist to do.
But that’s another matter for another piece. 😉
The ad demonstrates an interesting finding of the meta-analysis: the reason contact works is not because it means people will finally get the chance to engage in face-to-face, “rational” argument about their opposing views. No. The reason why it works is purely emotional:
“…the process underlying contact’s ability to reduce prejudice involves the tendency for familiarity to breed liking.” (Pettigrew and Tropp, 766)
As Pettigrew has said elsewhere:
“Your stereotypes about the other group don’t necessarily change, but you grow to like them anyway.” (“Reducing Prejudice and Discrimination”)
And as Allport has put it so eloquently:
“So many tangles in life are ultimately hopeless that we have no appropriate sword other than laughter.” (Allport, “The Person in Psychology”, 134)
Indeed we will never see eye to eye with one another. We will never fully understand one another. But we can become more familiar with one another, we can laugh with one another, and in so doing, “breed liking.”
If you found this short article helpful and think the message is worth getting out there, give it some applause! 👏 + share it out!
