The Impact of Perspective-taking on Prejudice Reduction and Political Attitudes

• In Event: The Politics of Racial Prejudice

Abstract

This paper reports the results of an intervention to reduce racial prejudice towards African-Americans among U.S. college students using an online perspective-taking game format adapted from Simonovits, Kézdi, and Kardos (2018). The intervention encourages participants to adopt the perspective of an African-American college student who experiences racial prejudice and make choices regarding how to respond to the bias they encounter. The intervention was evaluated using a randomized experiment in which a sample of 513 undergraduate students from a large, mid-Atlantic university completed either the perspective-taking treatment or Baron-Cohen and colleagues’ (2001) “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” task. I find that participation in the perspective-taking game reduces racial resentment and increases support for political policies that would help African-Americans including Affirmative Action and reparations for slavery. The intervention also increases support for the belief that more progress is needed to ensure racial equality in America. This study offers a successful intervention that may be used as a low-cost bias reduction training for universities and colleges to combat the rising hate-related incidents in American higher education. More broadly, my results provide insight into the nature of racial prejudice and the opposition to racially liberal policies.

Author

• Alauna Safarpour, University of Maryland, College Park