Focus on prejudice and context-based discrimination

Diversity Day 2024: Interview with Prof. Dr. Birte Siem and Dr. Iniobong Essien

2024-05-27 Social context seems to play a role in prejudice, stereotypes and discrimination. Prejudices can be more or less pronounced depending on the situations in which we encounter people who belong to the other group.

©Leuphana/Grafik
It is known from various (socio-psychological) research studies that a diversity-sensitive external presentation of an organisation (e.g. in the form of a pro-diversity statement on a company's website) can be an effective approach to making this organisation more attractive to members of disadvantaged groups. For such a strategy to be effective, however, it is important that it contains more than "empty words".

Questions Prof. Dr. Birte Siem

There are many prejudices, especially against marginalized groups. What (social) psychological approaches are there to reduce prejudice or exclusion? How can these be implemented in practice?

There is a whole range of approaches based on social psychology that can be used to reduce prejudice. One of the most researched approaches is direct (face-to-face) intergroup contact. This involves members of (usually) two social groups whose relationship is characterized by mutual stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination interacting with each other. If certain conditions are met in the contact situation (e.g. the existence of a common goal that can only be achieved through cooperation between the groups), the probability that intergroup contact can contribute to a reduction in prejudices and stereotypes increases. In practice, a contact situation designed in this way can be implemented very well in the context of cooperative learning, for example. In this approach, also known as the jigsaw method or group puzzle, small groups of pupils or students are formed that are made up of members of different social groups and can only achieve a common learning goal through cooperation.

 

Even if the intergroup contact approach can demonstrably reduce stereotypes and prejudices, it should also be viewed critically. For example, a number of research studies, including our own, show that friendly, cooperative contact can reduce prejudice, but at the same time can also have a demobilizing effect, i.e. it can undermine the willingness of members of disadvantaged and privileged social groups to work for social change. Ideally, contact should therefore also be "politicized", i.e. allow the discussion of group-based injustice or status differences, among other things.

 

A further potential limitation of the contact approach (and various other approaches to reducing prejudice) is that those whose prejudices are comparatively strong are generally not reached by these approaches. People with stronger prejudices are unlikely to (voluntarily) participate in an intervention with direct contact or actively seek contact with members of a negatively stereotyped foreign group themselves. A promising approach that addresses this problem is based on the principle of entertainment education. The core idea is to convey information on socially relevant topics by means of entertaining stories (e.g. in the form of films or books). In our own research, we were able to show that this approach was able to reduce anti-Muslim prejudice among non-Muslims, especially among people who harbored comparatively strong prejudices. The approach is probably particularly effective for this group of people because the critical prejudice-reducing message is conveyed "under the radar", packaged in an exciting story. We are currently investigating this and other possible mechanisms of action in more detail in our research.  

Many institutions still do not adequately reflect social diversity. For example, how can counseling services that target socially disadvantaged groups reach them better?

Members of disadvantaged groups are still underrepresented in various institutions, e.g. BIPoC as teachers in schools or as medical professionals in the healthcare sector. It is known from various (socio-psychological) research studies that a diversity-sensitive external presentation of an organization (e.g. in the form of a pro-diversity statement on a company's website) can be an effective approach to making this organization more attractive to members of disadvantaged groups. However, for such a strategy to be effective, it is important that it contains more than "empty words". Various research findings show, for example, that an institution's statement in favor of diversity tends to make members of disadvantaged groups suspicious (and may be perceived as "diversity-washing") if the appreciation of diversity is not clearly reflected in the institution's structures and services. In addition, our own research suggests that the perceived group affiliations of clients and professionals (e.g. psychosocial counselors) within an institution can also play a role. If a common group affiliation is perceived here, this can promote clients' trust in the professional. However, the study results on this are inconsistent overall, so that further research is needed before clear practical recommendations can be made.

 

Questions Dr. Iniobong Essien

What role does the social context play in relation to stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination? Can you give some examples?

The idea that the social context, i.e. situations, the social environment or even the physical environment, plays a role in prejudice and discrimination has been around for some time. For example, study findings with US participants show that prejudices against black people are more pronounced when they are in stereotypically negative situations, such as a street corner or a wall covered in graffiti. In contrast, prejudices were less pronounced when Black people were in a more positive situation such as a family party. Findings such as these indicate that situational characteristics can play a role in the manifestation of prejudice.

 

We also know from research in recent years that prejudices and stereotypes can also vary geographically. Such research examines at a geographical level the extent to which prejudices and stereotypes are expressed differently in regions, for example because they are expressed more or less by the local population depending on the location, and how these differences in the expression of prejudices are related to local discriminatory behavior. For example, in our own study on racial profiling in the USA, we were able to show that in regions with more pronounced anti-Black prejudices and stereotypes, Black drivers were stopped by the police disproportionately more often. The study was based on more than 130 million traffic stops and showed that Black motorists were particularly likely to be stopped by police in counties where the local white population disliked African Americans. Such correlations between prejudice and discrimination in regions have now been shown in various areas such as healthcare and disadvantage in the education system. Most of the previous findings in this area come from the USA and there is still too little systematic research in this area in Germany.

 

Last but not least, physical environments themselves can also become the target of stereotypes. For example, research on so-called place-based stereotypes shows that we attribute different characteristics to places depending on which social groups are located there. For example, study findings from the USA indicate that neighborhoods in which a majority of black people live tend to be associated with negative characteristics such as "poor" or "run-down". In line with this, we were also able to show in our research that study participants in Germany have very negative perceptions of immigrant neighborhoods and associate these places with characteristics such as "crime", "dirty" and "dangerous". In contrast, the study participants associated predominantly positive characteristics such as "clean", "orderly" and "safe" with neighborhoods in which the majority of people were German. These findings are also consistent with research into public discourse in Germany, which shows that migrant neighborhoods are often referred to as "problem areas" or "social hotspots" and described as being characterized by conflict and crime. We assume that location-based stereotypes are socially relevant due to their widespread prevalence. Since previous research also suggests that place-based stereotypes influence how strongly we feel connected to places and how much we are willing to protect and care for these places, place-based stereotypes are probably also relevant for political, urban planning and infrastructural decisions.

In the project "Context-based discrimination in the school context", you investigated whether the ethnic composition of school classes has an impact on the discriminatory behavior of teachers. What insights have you gained from your project?

In this project, we are developing and testing a theoretical model that assumes that the ethnic and socio-economic composition of schools influences stereotypes and the decision-making behavior of teachers in the classroom and thus contributes to disparities in education. We refer to this effect as "context-based discrimination". In experimental studies, we test the extent to which teachers perceive classrooms more negatively when they contain a larger proportion of students belonging to negatively stereotyped groups.

 

Contact

  • Dr. Iniobong Essien
  • Prof. Dr. Birte Siem