Homogeneous campus settings hide avoidance behavior while exposing stated beliefs

Evidence

Specifically, informants of the present study were largely friends and significant others of the participants, a majority of whom had known the participants for about 3 years within the context of the university. … Due to the university’s lack of diversity, it is unlikely that these informants would have had adequate opportunity to observe the participants interacting with or avoiding Muslims. As a result, the informants would not be able to accurately describe the participants’ avoidance-related emotions and behaviors toward Muslims and their religion, which is consistent with previous research (Funder & Dobroth, 1987; McCrae et al., 1998). People’s reactions to Muslims are different than their beliefs regarding Muslims/ Islam because beliefs are more likely to be observed in most university settings in the United States. — Sherman A. Lee, Chelsea A. Reid, Stephen D. Short, Jeffrey A. Gibbons, Ruth Yeh, and Matthew L. Campbell, Fear of Muslims, 115

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: how the social bubble of a homogeneous campus makes covert prejudice literally unobservable to the people closest to the person holding it.
• QUESTION: If friends and partners of three years can’t observe avoidance, what setting could a valid informant-report study actually use?
• XREF: connects to: Faculty-only settings allow honest anti-racist discussion that student presence suppresses. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 81