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DIVERSITY AND PEACEMAKING. LECTURE 11. Peacemaking. Although certain psychological forces can breed destructive conflict, we can harness other forces to bring conflict to a positive end. What are these ingredients of peace and harmony?. Contact. Does desegregation improve racial attitudes?
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DIVERSITY AND PEACEMAKING LECTURE 11
Peacemaking • Although certain psychological forces can breed destructive conflict, we can harness other forces to bring conflict to a positive end. • What are these ingredients of peace and harmony?
Contact • Does desegregation improve racial attitudes? • The evidence is mixed.
Contact • After reviewing all the available studies, Walter Stephan (1986) concluded that racial attitudes had been little affected by desegregation. • Many student exchange programs have likewise had less-than-hoped–for effects on student attitudes toward their host countries.
Contact • For example, when American students study in France, often living with other Americans as they do so, their stereotypes of the French tend not to improve (Strobe & others, 1988). • Contact also failed to allay the loathing of Rwandan Tutsis by their Hutu neighbors.
Contact • When does desegregation improve racial attitudes? • Might the amount of interracial contact be a factor? • Indeed it seems to be.
Contact • Researchers have gone into dozens of desegregated schools and observed with whom children of a given race eat with, socialize with , and talk to.
Contact • Race influences contact. • Whites disproportionately associate with Whites, Blacks with Blacks (Schofield, 1986).
Contact • In contrast, studies show that prolonged, personal contact between Whites and Blacks produce positive interracial attitudes.
Contact/Friendship • Surveys of nearly 4,000 Europeans reveal that friendship is a key to successful contact. • If you have a minority-group friend, you become much more likely to express sympathy and support for the friend’s group.
Contact/Friendship • It’s true of West Germans’ attitudes toward Turks, French attitudes toward Asians and North Africans, Netherlanders’ attitudes toward Surinamers and Turks, and Britishers’ attitudes toward West Indians and Asians (Brown & others, 1999, Pettigrew, 1997).
Equal Status Contact • Studies have shown that equal status contact is more likely to improve attitudes than unequal status contact. • For example, studies have shows that contact between neighbors, summer campers, soldiers improved racial attitudes (Pettigrew, 1988).
Cooperation • Although equal-status contact can help, it is sometimes not enough. • Competitive contact divides whereas cooperative contact can help unit and change attitudes.
Common external threats • Friendliness is common among those who experience a shared threat. • Have you ever been victimized by the weather, punished by a teacher?
Common external threats • You may recall feeling close to those with whom you shared this predicament. • Having a common enemy unified groups of competing boys in many experiments (Dion, 1979).
Superordinate goals • Closely related to the unifying power of an external threat is the unifying power of superordinate goals, goals that compel all in a group and require cooperative effort.
Superordinate goals • Dovidio and others (1999) report that working cooperatively has especially favorable effects under conditions that lead people to define a new, inclusive group that dissolves their former subgroups.
Superordinate goals • To combat Germany, Italy, and Japan during World War II the U.S. and the former U.S.S.R., along with other nations, formed one united group named the Allies. • So long as the superordinate goal of defeating a common enemy lasted, so did supportive U.S. attitudes toward the Russians.
