Theater as an intervention for prejudice reduction: Primary and secondary transfer effects of intergroup contact

• Autor(a) principal: Schmidt, Colten
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/27312
• topic: Intergroup contact; Secondary effects; Cognitive liberalization; Prejudice reduction; Contato intergrupal; Generalização; Liberalização cognitiva; Redução do preconceito

Prejudice continues to be a persistent social problem that results in discrimination, inequalities, and violence. Much basic and applied research have been done on ways to reduce prejudice with the most common theory studied being intergroup contact theory, which says that positive contact between group members can improve intergroup relations. Since Gordon Allport proposed the theory almost 70 years ago, researchers have grown the theory and found spillover effects in prejudice reduction to other groups. One understudied area is research into using plays or theater as a vehicle for prejudice reduction (i.e., indirect contact). Building on this literature on direct and indirect intergroup contact, the current study examined if attending live theater may reduce prejudice and raise positive attitudes toward the group portrayed in the play, and generalize to other groups that were not contacted in the play (i.e., secondary transfer effect). Specifically, we assessed people’s attitudes before (Time 1) and after (Time 2) they watched a play about immigrants (experimental condition) vs an unrelated topic (control condition).37 White American participants participated in study, however considering the very small sample size we had to conduct only non-parametric test, showing no differences between participants attitudes towards multiple social groups. Considering this major limitation, we cannot make any conclusions from the current study and further research is needed to test the hypothesized effects.