Chapter . Critical Learning Exercises - Responding to and Reducing Prejudice

Students’ experiences with having an identity that is negatively stereotyped or socially devalued will differ, as will their reactions and coping strategies. Students may discuss their propensity to expect people to perceive them in terms of their group membership (stigma consciousness), believe they face less discrimination than the average member of their group (person–group discrimination discrepancy), and downplay their experience by a desire to believe in the status quo. Coping strategies used by students may include those effective strategies described in the text: identifying with positive role models, reappraising anxiety, affirming broader values, confronting those with biases, or compensating for others’ biases.

Recommendations for how people should deal with subtle bias may differ but may include a discussion of how difficult it may be to determine whether negative experiences are based on one’s actions and abilities or are the result of prejudice, which is referred to as attributional ambiguity. In relation to confronting those with biases, the target empowerment model may be used to support a recommendation that the target of bias should ask their perceiver to reflect on their own values or positive attributes, which will then increase the perceiver taking the target’s point of view in a less threatening manner. The student may also discuss the costs of confrontation based on the situation, though implying that social change requires these confrontations to occur.

Student’s responses for comparisons and contrasts of colorblind versus multicultural ideology will likely result in a focus on the latter as being more effective. The pros of colorblind ideology may include reduced engagement in discrimination, and comfort for advantaged majority groups. However, the cons of colorblind ideology may include that it encourages efforts to control biases or prejudices, which can often backfire; it implies that everyone should conform to the status quo and act as if ethnicity doesn’t matter; and it avoids discussing group identity. The pros of multicultural ideology may include actively embracing diversity, a greater sense of belonging and better performance of minority members, approaching group differences as something to be celebrated, and smoother interactions between majority and minority members. The cons may include promoting unwarranted stereotypes.

Students will differ in their approach to reducing possible biases in a diverse group of people. However, students may draw on the stages for intergroup contact to outline their plan. Stage 1 includes initial contact, decategorization, and initial anxiety that may lead to liking of the individual. Stage 2 includes established contact, salient categorization, and lessening of prejudice against the outgroup. Stage 3 includes common ingroup identity, recategorization, and a maximum reduction in prejudice that fosters cooperation. Students may also use findings from the Robbers Cave experiment demonstrating how reducing stereotyping, reducing anxiety, and fostering empathy may lead to positive change. In addition, students may utilize research on the jigsaw classroom to illustrate how prejudice may be reduced by dividing a project into subtopics or tasks and assigning them to the various members to master in an environment where there is equal status and cooperation toward a common goal.