Provision of Information About Out-group Members as an Effective Intervention to Reduce Intergroup Bias

• In Event: Reducing Children's Intergroup Biases: Effective Cross-Cultural Interventions

Abstract

Intergroup biases are some of the most corrosive social psychological phenomena plaguing today’s multicultural societies. Developmental studies reveal that such biases emerge in early childhood. One of the dominant hypotheses regarding the origin of intergroup biases is the lack of knowledge about out-groups. Arguably, the salience of diverse social groups, coupled with lack of knowledge about each other, increases anxiety, and encourages the recruitment of stereotypes and exaggerated beliefs about intergroup differences. An implication of this general hypothesis is that providing information about out‐groups may be an effective mean for alleviating intergroup biases. The present studies assessed whether providing information about members of out-groups can reduce children’s biases towards them, both in the laboratory and the field.
Study 1 examined in a laboratory experimental design whether sheer provision of information about the out-group suffices to alter children’s attitudes towards them. To that end, we asked 96 secular Jewish-Israeli kindergarteners (50% female; Mage = 5.66 years) and 2nd graders (50% female; Mage = 7.66 years) for their informational scope preference, namely, whether they would like to receive information about an individual or about his/her group. We assessed this regarding an in-group (Jewish) and two out-group individuals (an Arab as a member of a “conflict” out-group, and a Scot as a member of a “neutral” out-group). We also assessed children’s attitudes towards these groups. A week later, we provided children with either no information about those individuals, with information about the particular individual, or with information about the individual’s group . We then re-assessed children’s attitudes towards the groups. The findings revealed that, relative to children’s baseline attitudes regarding the different groups, provision of individual information, but not group information, improved children’s attitudes toward Arabs (Figure 1).
Study 2 evaluated the effectiveness of a field intervention program for improving attitudes of 109 Jewish-Israeli secular and religious kindergarteners (59% female; Mage = 5.83 years) regarding their in-group and three out-groups: secular/religious Jews, Ethiopian-descendant Jews, and Arabs. In the intervention, we introduced to children four persona dolls representing the different groups, and told children stories about the dolls, presenting some of their individual and pertinent group characteristics, and positive encounters between the dolls. A pre- and post-test battery assessed the intervention’s effects on children’s intergroup attitudes. Findings revealed an improvement in children’s attitudes towards the in-group and the out-groups, especially among religious children (Table 1).
Together, these studies highlight the potential of provision of information, especially information about individual out-group members, for reducing intergroup biases in young children living in multicultural and conflict-ridden societies.

Authors

• Meytal Nasie, Tel Aviv University
  Presenting Author

• Margalit Ziv, Kaye Academic College of Education

• Gil Diesendruck, Bar Ilan University