25.8: Responses

Remedies and Reasoning

Problems stemming from prejudices and discrimination are among the most severe difficulties we face today. There are no easy answers or quick fixes, but it is important to look for strategies that could help reduce these problems.

Although mere contact between members of different groups is not as effective at changing stereotypes or reducing prejudice as we might have thought, there is something to the contact hypothesis. When members of groups that dislike or distrust each other interact in a positive setting; it often does help members of each group see members of the other group in a more positive light. But if people are brought together and the setting isn’t positive, things may get worse, and it isn’t always easy to ensure a positive setting in the real world.

For example, contact between black and white students increased when schools were desegregated, and this did sometimes lead to less prejudice. The general findings suggest that this contact did not significantly reduce prejudice, however, and in some cases prejudice even increased. One reason for this may be that the contact in such settings is often minimal; there is still a lot of segregation in desegregated schools. Members of ethnic groups often congregate together (a quick look at who sits with whom in most school cafeterias should convince you of this). But even so, contact did increase without any noticeable drop in prejudice. So mere contact is not enough.

Education and the Jigsaw Classroom

Education is probably the best hope for changing stereotypes and prejudices. In general, younger people in our culture have fewer negative stereotypes than older people, and it is probably easier to change their attitudes than it is to change the attitudes of people who are more set in their ways.

One setting that has had a good deal of success is the jigsaw classroom. It was developed by Elliot Aronson and his co-workers in the 1970s in Austin, Texas. The idea is to set up a situation where two or more groups of students must work together to achieve a common goal. Students are placed in small groups. Each person in the group must master a given bit of the material and teach it to the other people in the group, so each person and their contribution are like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that must be worked in to complete the picture.

For example, in a project on the life of George W. Bush, one student might gather information on Bush’s childhood, another on his time in college, and so on. So, the success of the group requires the cooperation of all its members. Such approaches are now part of what has become known as the cooperative learning movement.

This interdependence requires working together, and it often does foster mutual interest and respect that are not present in more traditional classrooms. Even approaches like this are not a universal cure, however, since the quicker students in a group may come to resent group members that they see are slowing the group’s work down.

Breaking Habits

Stereotypes and prejudices are habitual, relatively automatic patterns of thinking and feeling, and Patricia Devine has usefully compared changing a stereotype to breaking a habit. Often stereotypes are very ingrained, and we can’t expect to get rid of them easily—any more than a long-time smoker can hope to easily kick the habit. It takes work over time, and even then, the results may be less than perfect. But if one wants to change how they think about another group, conscious effort to do so, including catching oneself when one falls back into stereotypical modes of thought, can help. Of course, none of this works unless a person wants to change.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have seen that stereotypes (and through them prejudices) are usually based on flawed or fallacious reasoning. Thinking more clearly about them and the evidence on which they rest is the first step in dealing with them.