Distrust between groups can be broken in 2 hours

November 7, 2008

Tolerance Over Race Can Spread, Studies Find

By BENEDICT CAREY

This was supposed to be the election when hidden racism would rear its head. ...

But lost in all that anguished commentary, experts say, was an important recent finding from the study of prejudice: that mutual trust between members of different races can catch on just as quickly, and spread just as fast, as suspicion.

In some new studies, psychologists have been able to establish a close relationship between diverse pairs — black and white, Latino and Asian, black and Latino — in a matter of hours. That relationship immediately reduces conscious and unconscious bias in both people, and also significantly reduces prejudice toward the other group in each individual’s close friends.

This extended-contact effect, as it is called, travels like a benign virus through an entire peer group, counteracting subtle or not so subtle mistrust.

“It’s important to remember that implicit biases are out there, absolutely; but I think that that’s only half the story,” said Linda R. Tropp, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts. “With broader changes in the society at large, people can also become more willing to reach across racial boundaries, and that goes for both minorities and whites.”

...

In studies over the past few years, researchers have demonstrated how quickly trust can build in the right circumstances. To build a close relationship from scratch, psychologists have two strangers come together in four hour-long sessions. In the first, the two share their answers to a list of questions, from the innocuous “Would you like to be famous? In what way?” to the more serious, like “If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?”

In the second session, the pair competes against other pairs in a variety of timed parlor games. In the third, they talk about a variety of things, including why they are proud to be a member of their ethnic group, whether Latino, Asian, white or black. Finally, they take turns wearing a blindfold, while their partner gives instructions for navigating a maze.

Trivial as they may sound, those exercises create a relationship “that is as close as any relationship the person has,” said Art Aron, a social psychologist at Stony Brook University who developed the program with his wife, Elaine N. Aron.

The new relationship can last months or longer, and it almost immediately lowers a person’s score on a variety of prejudice measures. Moreover, it significantly reduces anxiety during encounters with other members of that second group, as gauged by stress hormone levels in the saliva.

In a series of studies, Art Aron and others have found that, by generating a single cross-group friendship, they can quickly improve relations between cliques that have been pitted against one another in hostile competitions. In a continuing study of some 1,000 new students at Stony Brook, Dr. Aron has found that merely being in the same class where other interracial pairs were interacting can reduce levels of prejudice.

The reason such changes emerge, some psychologists argue, is that people have a selfish urge to expand their own identities through others — to make themselves a part of others’ lives, and vice versa, as lovers, parents, colleagues, friends. Studies find that that is exactly what happens in a relationship: people are not merely aware of their closest friends’ problems but to some extent feel the sting, the humiliation, the injustice.

Psychologists can manipulate this need for self-expansion. In one recent experiment, led by Stephen Wright, a psychologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, researchers had 47 students describe their workloads and activities and made each student feel either overextended or in a rut, based on bogus personality tests. [also see Wright's home page.]

“It’s easy enough to do, because students always feel both overwhelmed and in a rut,” Dr. Wright said. Those led to feel in a rut, he went on, “were more interested than the others in having a friendship with someone with a name that is clearly from a minority group.”

This impulse pushes against any implicit or subconscious bias a person may have....

(copyright 2008 New York Times)