3-211 - Improving Intergroup Interventions by Understanding Factors That Impede and Facilitate Change

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Stereotyping and prejudice begin early in childhood and have negative consequences for children’s wellbeing. Accordingly, educators and scientists have designed many types of interventions aimed at reducing children’s intergroup biases. Unfortunately, empirical tests indicate that interventions often fail, especially when judged by standards of practical, as well as statistical, significance. We argue in this symposium that designing more effective interventions requires critical analysis of the mechanisms and processes responsible for failures to induce attitude and behavior change. The goal of this symposium is to understand what makes for a successful intervention by: (1) contrasting properties of failed versus successful interventions; and (2) considering how children's social and cognitive abilities both support and attenuate attempts to change their preferences, stereotypes, and behaviors.
The first talk outlines cognitive-developmental constraints (e.g., classification and perspective-taking skills) and constructivist processes (e.g., schematic information processing) that operate to impede intervention success. The second talk focuses specifically on a key issue in intervention success—namely, supporting children’s ability to generalize what is learned in an intervention to new contexts. The third talk highlights positive and negative outcomes associated with the use of literature to teach children about the malleable nature of prejudice. Finally, an eminent social psychologist with expertise in designing prejudice interventions will highlight themes from the three talks and offer a perspective from intervention research with adults.
Taken together, these talks illustrate the developmental factors that create challenges for reducing children's intergroup biases, and point to concrete strategies for designing more successful interventions.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chair

• Maggie Renno, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Discussant

• Patricia G. Devine, Univ of Wisc-Madison

Individual Presentations

• Constructivist Processes in Children's Interpretation and Response to Attitudinal Interventions - Presenting Author: Rebecca Sue Bigler, Univ of Texas-Austin; Erin Pahlke, Whitman College; Julie Milligan Hughes, The College of New Jersey

• Reducing Racial Bias: Success and Failure in Generalization - Presenting Author: Maggie Renno, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Karissa Propson, UW-Madison; Kristin Shutts, UW-Madison

• Believing Prejudice can Change: Upsides and Downsides for Intergroup Interactions - Presenting Author: Kristin J.M.B. Pauker, Univ of Hawaii at Manoa; Evan Apfelbaum, MIT; Carol S Dweck, Stanford University; Jennifer Eberhardt, Stanford University