A single antiracist dissenter shifts even private attitudes against prejudice

Evidence

If a single expression of prejudice can reinforce prejudice, can confronting individuals who make prejudicial statements or who behave in prejudicial ways diminish it? There are naturally costs to such confronting, because doing so breaks the established social norm of generally accepting the behavior of others. But even a single dissenter can be effective at promoting changes in prejudiced norms. Blanchard, Crandall, Brigham, and Vaughn (1994) arranged for White students to hear another student either condone or condemn racism before answering five questions about how their college should respond to acts of racism. Hearing another student condemn racism increased participants’ expressed antiracist opinions, and hearing someone condone racism reduced antiracist expressions, compared to a control condition in which no information about others’ opinions was provided. In addition, these changes occurred not only in participants’ oral responses in the presence of the person making the comment, but also on their privately expressed attitudes. This suggests that the attitude change was not simply based on public conformity, but reflected a real change in private attitudes. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1922

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the vault’s contact-theory reassessment: norm-confrontation is a causal lever distinct from intergroup contact.
• SEED: Angle for an essay: confronting prejudice as cheap collective-action substitute for direct contact in reducing bias.