There are several strategies for counteracting prejudice discussed in the document. The contact hypothesis proposed by Allport argues that intergroup contact can reduce prejudice when there is equal status, cooperation, personal acquaintance, and support. Studies have found support for the contact hypothesis. Different models of contact include decategorization, recategorization, and mutual differentiation. Spotlighting value conflicts and cognitive strategies aim to reduce inconsistencies and recognize one's own prejudices. Establishing superordinate goals that require cooperation can also help reduce prejudice by bringing groups together around a common cause. Planned experiences of discrimination are meant to increase empathy by exposing majority group members to minority experiences.

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Counteracting prejudice

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Some strategies:
 Contact hypothesis
 Spotlighting Value Conflicts
 Cognition
 Superordinate Goals
 Planned, Personal Experience of Discrimination

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Allport and the contact hypothesis:
 Argued that intergroup contact would only lead to decreased
prejudice under the following four conditions:
 Equal status between groups in the situation
 Cooperative activity toward common goals
 Personalised acquaintance (“that leads to the perception of
common interests and humanity”)
 Support for the contact by authorities or local norms

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Support
 Has received support in many studies, conducted in various
situations and with stigmatised social groups (from foreign
students to the elderly).
 Pettigrew and Tropp conducted a meta-analysis of 203 studies
on intergroup contact as an influence on varied measures of
prejudice.
 94% of these studies found an inverse relationship between
contact and prejudice.
 Findings also showed that the intergroup contact’s prejudice-
reducing effects can generalise to new social situations, whole
outgroups or to other outgroups

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Different models of contact
 3 related, but different, views as to the most effective way to
conduct intergroup contact interventions:
 1) Decategorisation: initial ingroup-outgroup catergorisations are
weakened and taken over by other cross-cutting similarities
between members. E.g. that outgroup member is like me in doing,
thinking, or feeling
 2) Recategorisation: ingroup-outgroup categorisation is weakened
by uniting both groups in a common superordinate identity. E.g.
We are all Australians
 3) Mutual differentiation: recommends maintaining the initial social
catergory but explicitly emphasising that the groups are mutually
interdependent. E.g. our groups are different, but we need to work
together to accomplish this goal.

6. + Spotlighting Value conflicts & Cognition
Spotlighting Value Conflicts
 Combines cognitive and motivational bases for reducing prejudice.
 Focused on showing inconsistencies in the person’s values.
 This engages their self-concept and often develops guilt
motivation.
 Aims to motivate people to change their beliefs and behaviour in
the direction of consistency with key underlying values such as
fairness and equality.
Cognition
 Educate people how to recognise the existence of their own
prejudices and what they’re based on. Try and control automatic
responses to prejudice in yourself.

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Superordinate Goals
 Create/identify a common goal for each group that is important
and requires cooperation to achieve.
 E.g. Sustainable Peace Project – South Africa
 The project brings together ex-prisoners, police and army officers, victims,
community leaders and business people. For a few days former enemies walk
together in a place of unspoilt beauty, cross crocodile-infested rivers, sleep on
the ground, and protect each other while on guard duty against dangerous
animals. The friendship that grows out of this experience echoes similar results
achieved with employing wilderness to bring South African ex-combatants
together.
 Peace Through Music Project –
Northern Ireland

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Planned, Personal Experience of
Discrimination
 An interactive, experiential method
 Majority group members exposed to prejudice and
discrimination that minority-group individuals undergo every
day.
 Expectation: more empathy and better understanding of the
problems of minorities.
 Jane Eliot’s Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes exercise...