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Essay / A study on imagined contact as an effective method for reducing prejudice no other options are available. Crips, Turner, and Lambert (2007) have previously studied the effects of imagined contact with members of an outgroup on prejudice toward that outgroup. This study replicates that of Crisp and colleagues regarding out-group anxiety toward Muslims. We asked our participants to imagine first contact with a Muslim stranger or an undescribed neutral stranger. Participants then indicated their comfort level with various demographic groups, including Muslims. The data showed no significant reduction in experimental conditions, therefore not supporting the findings of Crisp and colleagues (2007). However, certain moderating factors, such as political orientation or general anxiety level, have significant effects on comfort level with Muslims. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayReducing Prejudice Through Imaginary ContactIntroductionThe United States is currently divided on many issues; prejudice and discrimination are at the heart of many of these political and social debates. Although many people are interested in further debate on these issues, few suggest real progress. However, one tool for reducing intergroup bias, especially with an outgroup, is intergroup contact. An extension of contact – imagined contact where participants imagine interacting with a member of another group – is more practical. Imagined contact has the potential to fill knowledge gaps and reduce bias, but only if it is a truly effective and authentic phenomenon. , 1954). According to Allport, these conditions include equal status and cooperation for common goals and, above all, positive interaction (1954). There are two mechanisms of intergroup contact that could reduce prejudice under the right circumstances. The first mechanism is the reduction of intergroup anxiety. Intergroup anxiety reduces the opportunity to initiate intergroup contact in the first place, thereby increasing prejudice (Stephan & Stephan 1985). Intergroup anxiety results from negative expectations, but not necessarily from prior experiences, rejection, or discrimination (Stephan & Stephan, 1985). According to Stephan and Stephan, successful group contact, as defined by the conditions set out by Allport (1954), should lead groups to realize that they have no reason to fear each other, thereby reducing anxiety and intergroup bias. The second mechanism is reduction through change of conditions. and cognitive consequences: perceptions, stereotypes and judgments about a group (Crisp, Turner and Lambert, 2007). Action on these factors reduces prejudice by neutralizing “the group homogeneity effect” (Quattrone and Jones, 1980). This effect is observed when people perceive outgroup members to be more homogeneous than ingroup members (Quattrone & Jones, 1980). When there is successful contact, people are more likely to view members of other groups as individuals, rather than attributing group characteristics to them ( Crisp et al., 2007). However, the effect would be less if the characteristicsof the previous group were positive or if the contact was negative (Crisp et al., 2007). Reducing prejudice through increasing variability in descriptions of out-group traits has been shown to reduce tensions between Hindus and Muslims in Bangladesh (Islam and Hewstone, 1993), which is relevant to the emphasis on by this study on Muslims as an out-group. Actual contact is not always possible as a tool to reduce prejudice between groups. Crips and colleagues hypothesized that imagining contact, rather than direct contact, may also reduce intergroup prejudice (2007). Crisp, Stathi, Turner, and Husnu also noted that imaginary contact had four key strengths over Allport's direct contact: it can be used in situations where real or prolonged contact is not possible, it is cheap and accessible treatment, it is safe, and it could make people more open to positive interactions in the future (2009). Imagining contact reduces bias through both mechanisms described above by activating knowledge structures associated with the mind (Crisp et al., 2007). If contact is successful, concepts associated with this successful interaction, such as comfort – an indication of reduced intergroup anxiety – and greater trait variance – a change in perceptions, stereotypes and judgments about a group – should be activated (Crisp et al., 2007). When thinking about the outgroup, the activated concepts should lead people to refer to any positive interactions and would influence perceptions of outgroups. Bargh and colleagues believe that thinking about social categories can generate negative intergroup attitudes and behaviors, particularly when thinking about an outgroup. and can initiate negative associated knowledge structures (1996). This finding may raise an important caveat in this study. However, Crisp and colleagues believe that thinking about the interaction itself rather than an outgroup category and placing thoughts in the context of the interaction – how they behave towards the interaction partner and vice versa – would counteract the appearance of negative attitudes (2007). and colleagues conducted a study in which undergraduate participants were asked to either imagine an outdoor scene (the control group) or contact with an elderly person (the experimental group) (2007). Participants in the experimental condition were asked to list different ways they could categorize the imagined older person after an imagined conversation (Crisp et al., 2007). After this imagined contact, all participants were informed that the researchers might conduct a study in the near future with a local nursing home and were asked to rate their preference for working with a young person and an elderly person on a Likert scale 1-9. type scale (1 = not at all, 9 = very much) to assess the relevance of the pairings in the researchers' follow-up study (Crisp et al., 2007). Crisp and colleagues found that although there was significant intergroup bias against the outgroup (elderly) in the control group, participants in the experimental group did not show a significant difference between the group's evaluations internal (young people) and external group (elderly) on work preferences. (2007). Crips and colleagues also found similar effects when participants were asked to imagine gay people as an out-group; intergroup anxiety was reduced and perceptual variability increased (2007). Other research examining imagined contact has shown that it is more effectivewhen the mental representation of the contact scenario was elaborated and/or when the outgroup partner was typical of the outgroup rather than atypical (Asbrock, Gutenbrunner, & Wagner, 2013). Asbrock and colleagues (2013) were interested in how this might apply to people with different personality traits, such as those who support right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO). ). The researchers concluded that people with high RWA indicated lower levels of negative emotions toward Turks and greater willingness to initiate future contact with Roma, both after imagined contact (Asbrock, Gutenbrunner, and Wagner, 2013). While people high in SDO showed fewer negative emotions after imagining contact with Turks, they did not feel more willing to engage in social contact with Roma (Asbrock, Gutenbrunner, & Wagner, 2013). This finding highlights an important criticism of imagined contact, namely the possibility that for many participants, although it decreases self-reported negative emotions toward outgroups, it does not change behaviors. This study is designed to examine the reliability of these results (Crisp et al., 2007) when applied to students imagining an interaction with people of the Muslim faith. After reviewing the current literature, the targeted outgroup for prejudice reduction through imagined contact was Muslims; this group has faced discrimination in recent years. This study hypothesizes that imagined contact with a Muslim, compared to imagining neutral contact, will reduce prejudice as measured by levels of comfort working with a Muslim, as operationalized by Crisp and colleagues. colleagues (2007). Methods This study is a conceptual replication of Crisp, Turner. , and the first experiment of Lambert (2007). The study is a conceptual rather than direct replication due to time constraints, demographic differences between Claremont and the group of subjects in the original experiment, and different interest in the group measured in prejudice against him.ParticipantsThe Participant group consisted of American students, particularly students attending one of the Claremont colleges. We recruited via social media to gather participants to complete a Qualtrics survey, targeting Claremont Colleges student social media circles. Of the 165 participants who responded to the survey, 48 completed it. Three participants were excluded from data analysis, as explained in more detail in the results section, resulting in 45 observations subjected to data analysis. Materials The survey platform was Qualtrics, which made the survey most effective and easiest to disseminate to our group of participants. The study was cross-subject design. In experimental conditions, participants had to imagine contact with a Muslim. In the control condition, participants were asked to imagine contact with an undescribed stranger. This scenario is a departure from the original study since Crisp and colleagues (2007) asked participants to imagine an “outdoor scene” as a control. The study used an undescribed stranger so that we could control for the effect of simply imagining contact with any person, rather than a specific outgroup. According to the availability heuristic theory, the imagined stranger should be the most typical member – and therefore a member of the ingroup – as opposed to imagining a Muslim (Kahneman and Tversky, 1986), which creates Asalient contrast between our experimental group and our control group. band. Thus, the independent variable of interest is the group to which the participants belonged. The dependent variable was participants' reported prejudice against Muslims. Bias was operationalized by measuring self-reported comfort level working with Muslims, one of the scales used in the original study by Crips and colleagues (2007), except that the outgroup was changed from elderly to Muslims. The scale was also shortened from a standard 9-point Likert scale to 7 points to make it easier for participants to choose a comfort level. After participants signed the consent form, participants were asked fill-in-the-blank questions, primarily on demographics such as age. We created two sets of instructions, designed to invoke participants' imagination of a detailed interaction with an outgroup member, or their imagination of an interaction with an undescribed stranger. Participants assigned to the imagined contact condition were asked the following question: “We would like you to take a minute to imagine yourself meeting a Muslim for the first time. Imagine what they look like, the conversation that follows, and, from what you learn, all the different ways you could classify them into different groups of people. Participants assigned to the control condition were asked: “We would like you to take a minute to imagine yourself meeting a stranger for the first time. Imagine what they look like, the conversation that follows, and, from what you learn, all the different ways you could classify them into different groups of people. Participants were also asked to “list the different ways in which you could classify the stranger following the conversation you have just imagined.” In both conditions, participants were given space to write while imagining the scene. Validation of a minimum of characters was implemented to ensure that participants were actually participating in the task. This task was designed to enhance the effect of imagining an interaction. Following this manipulation, participants completed a measure to assess their level of intergroup bias. They were told that the researchers "may soon conduct a collaborative study with a local mosque where we either bring non-Muslims to converse with other non-Muslims, or Muslims to converse with other Muslims, or non-Muslims to converse with Muslims. . We are evaluating whether people would be willing to participate in such a “conversation” study (it would be conducted in the psychology department, last 20 minutes, and you would get paid $5). If you were to enroll in this study, can you rate your comfort level for each of the following pairs. Please keep in mind that this is NOT a commitment to participate. We would just like to gauge people's interest. All responses will be confidential. Please respond openly and honestly. » Participants were asked to indicate their preference for working with another non-Muslim (“No-No” duo), then their preference for working with a Muslim (“Muslim-No” duo) on a score of 7 . point scale (1 = not at all, 7 = a lot). A “Muslim-Muslim” match rating scale was included to reinforce the impression that the same questions were also being asked of Muslims in preparation for this so-called future study. These relevant questions were asked as well as filler questions regarding comfort in working with Christians, Whites,Asians and people of the opposite sex. After completing the dependent measure, participants were asked what they believed the purpose of the study was, to determine whether they suspected that the pretest was intended to measure demand characteristics. In the final part of the survey, participants provided demographic information (see Appendix AG). Results Dataset Of the 165 participants registered on Qualtrics, 48 participants answered all questions. A participant who took less than 5 seconds to imagine contact was excluded from the initial dataset (the threshold was 5 seconds to imagine contact and 10 seconds to answer questions about their comfort working with members of different groups). This threshold was chosen because if the study required participants to actually take a full minute, as stated in the survey, to imagine a Muslim or a foreigner, most participants would be excluded from the data analysis. From the initial summary statistics of time taken, five seconds was chosen as the threshold for imagining a contact scenario. When processing the dataset, one participant who correctly guessed the hypothesis was excluded, as well as one participant who identified as Muslim. , because the interest is whether imagining contact with Muslims would reduce prejudice against non-Muslims, not against Muslims, because they are already part of the targeted out-group. Descriptive StatisticsFor descriptive statistics, approximately 55% of participants were randomly assigned to imagine interacting with a Muslim. In both experimental groups, the level of comfort when working with a Muslim on a 7-point Likert-type scale – with higher numerical values indicating more comfort – gives M = 4.91, SD = 2, 24. When participants imagined interacting with a Muslim, comfort level was M = 4.56, SD = 2.33. When participants imagined interacting with a stranger, comfort levels were M = 5.35, SD = 2.11. Although it appears that imagining a Muslim actually decreases comfort level, as statistical inference shows these are not statistically significant (see Appendix H). Statistical inference For statistical inference, the data were analyzed with multivariate regressions. Crisp and colleagues (2007) used a similar regression method to analyze data from one of their experiments. Bias, operationalized as non-Muslims' comfort level when working with Muslims, was measured on a Likert-type scale from 1 to 7, with a higher score indicating more comfort (comfort); this variable is also our explained variable. Our main explanatory variable of interest is the foreign_muslim dummy variable (1 = imagined Muslim, 0 = imagined foreigner). Since the value of Stranger_muslim is randomized across participants, no omitted variables can bias our estimated effect of imagining a stranger versus imagining a Muslim. However, two additional variables were held constant to obtain the most accurate effect possible when imagining a foreigner or a Muslim: ease of working with non-Muslims (non-Muslim work) and political views (politics). The ease of working with non-Muslims was chosen because it could affect comfort; if someone is naturally uncomfortable working with anyone regardless of religion, they would be expected to have difficulty working with a Muslim due to preferences unrelated to religion . Politics has remained constant because politically conservative people.
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