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Charlotta Bergh Brauer Lab Final project, Spring 2016 COMMITMENT AND SOCIAL NORMS AS PREJUDICE REDUCTION In 2011, McKenzie-Mohr published a booklet that contains six social marketing strategies for increasing people’s sustainable behaviors. The aim of this literature review is to apply two of these strategies, commitment and social norms, to the field of prejudice reduction. The outline for the paper will be as following: First, the concepts of commitment will be defined. Second, commitment will be applied to the field of prejudice reduction. Third, interventions using commitment will be described, and finally conclusions. Social norms will thereafter be presented in a similar manner. Finally, future directions for the two strategies will be presented. To start of with commitment, it is described by McKenzie-Mohr (2011) as the underlying reason for the increased likelihood of a person agreeing to a larger request, after previously agreed on a smaller request. For example, imagine a person calling householders, identifies himself as a member of a consumer group, and asks the householders if he could ask them a few questions about their soap preferences. A few days later the same man calls back and asks for a larger favor, having five or six people obtain an inventory of all the products in the house. Because of having agreed upon the smaller request, householders have been found to felt compelled to agree to the larger request (McKenzie-Mohr, 2011). The reason why people did so, is based on the theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). The theory’s basic idea is that cognitions that are psychologically inconsistent with other cognitions leads to the arousal of dissonance. As a consequence, people try to reduce dissonance by replacing those with or simply by adding consonant cognitions. Studies providing evidence the theory of cognitive dissonance and for commitment as a strategy have been provided. In a landmark study by Linder, Cooper, and Jones (1967), students were asked to write an essay about a law they did not agree upon. Students whom believed they wrote it voluntarily changed their attitude toward the direction of their essay, as opposed to students who were told nothing about voluntariness. Building on to Charlotta Bergh Brauer Lab Final project, Spring 2016 that, the approach has been applied to the field of prejudice reduction in a number of studies. On example is Eisenstadt and Leippe (1994), who showed reduction of prejudice as a result of freedom of choice, when white college students were asked to write an essay supporting a policy that benefitted Blacks. They also observed a generalization of attitude change beyond the advocated topic. Another example is Son Hing, Li, and Zanna (2002), who managed to reduce discriminatory behavior in aversive-racist students who first wrote a persuasive essay advocating for fair treatment of minority students, and afterwards were reminded of their prior prejudiced behavior. Hence, commitment has been shown to reduce prejudice. Despite these findings, this approach has some limitations. The main limitation of commitment as prejudice reduction is that central attitudes have often been shown to be resistant to attitude change in cognitive dissonance experiments (e.g. Cooper & Mackie, 1983; Sherman & Gorkin, 1980). However, Cooper and Mackie’s participants did not change attitude due to the fact that they produced arguments that was counter to the attitude that defined their membership in the group, which probably undermined the effects of cognitive dissonance. Furthermore, another limitation of this approach is that studies with other commitment techniques than writing about it are scarce. One exception is Heitland & Bohner (2010), whom used a combined method of writing and giving a speech to create cognitive dissonance, with positive results. Moving on to commitment and interventions for reducing prejudice. Studies with commitment in interventions are scarce. One exception is Rokeach Value Confrontation Technique (Rokeach, 1971;1973, in Paluck and Green, 2009). Rokeach lectured college students about (fictitious) research findings on values revealing people who value equality are more likely to be sympathetic toward back Americans’ civil rights. Most people at that time valued equality, but less favored Black civil rights. In postintervention questionnaires, there Charlotta Bergh Brauer Lab Final project, Spring 2016 were increased support for black civil rights and enrolled students in an ethnic core course. Thus, this technique seems to have changed the students’ attitude due to commitment. However, the effectiveness of commitment as prejudice reduction interventions seem to be ambiguous. Palluck and Green (2009) points out that the studies of previous mentioned Rokeach Value Confrontation Technique are notable for its behavioral measures and longitudinal design. However, the strengths of the results are as times mixed which might indicate an overall ineffectiveness of the technique. In addition, one major critique regarding commitment in prejudice reduction interventions overall, is difficulties in producing and replicating dissonance effects due to individual differences in preference for consistency (Cialdini, Trost and Newsom, 1995). In other words, people’s motive to be consistent with one’s own responses and to appear consistent to others varies, leaving the result of the interventions not as strong as one might have hoped. In conclusion, commitment as a strategy have been shown to reduce prejudice. However, experimentally tested interventions are few and the effectiveness of the strategy is ambiguous. Strongest effectiveness would possibly be on a person with high motive for consistence, who would both write and give a speech advocating for equality. Although, in reality it might be hard to know beforehand who is motivated and not. As a final comment, the strategy has also not been tested on its effectiveness to reduce other kinds of prejudice than racial. Moving on to the second intervention technique described by McKenzie-Mohr (2011), social norms. It can be defined as “information about what other people are doing and what they approve of” (Wilson, 2011, p. 152). Hence, the concept of social norms is about the importance and the impact of other people on our own behavior. In a landmark study by Asch (1955), participants were shown to alter their answers of which drawn line out of three that was the longest, to be in line with normative, although clearly incorrect, answers by other Charlotta Bergh Brauer Lab Final project, Spring 2016 participants. Since Asch’s ground breaking study, two types of norms have been identified: descriptive and injunctive (McKenzie-Mohr, 2011). Descriptive norms indicate which behaviors people normally engage in, while injunctive norms provide information on what behaviors are approved or disapproved of. However, many interventions use both these norms, as will be shown later in this paper. When it comes to studies of social norms and prejudice reduction, there are several supporting the strategy. Stangor, Sechrist and Jost (2001) showed that providing feedback to European American participants that others held different beliefs about African Americans changed the beliefs that they had about that group. The authors also found that providing information that others agreed with the persons own racial stereotypes bolstered them such that they were more resistant to change attitudes. Similarly, Wittenbrink and Henly (1996) showed that high-prejudiced participants expressed more favorable attitudes toward African Americans after being provided with feedback about others positive opinions about African Americans. In addition, observing in-group members interacting with out-group members is also associated with increased positive intergroup interactions (Dovidio et al, 2011). Consequently, all these studies provide evidence for change in peoples’ attitudes. Also, they are doing so by combining descriptive and injunctive norms, by providing information of both what behavior others engage in and what behavior is being approved upon. However, there are limitations to this approach. In Wittenbrink and Henly’s (1996) study, is was shown that in comparison to high-prejudices participants, low-prejudice people were not affected by others’ beliefs. It is unclear why these participants did not change attitude. Furthermore, when it comes to the use of descriptive and injunctive norms, Prince (2014) compared these two and their effect on college drinking. The results showed that greater reductions in drinking followed the injunctive norm condition or the combined injunctive/descriptive condition, than in the descriptive condition only. Whether or not these Charlotta Bergh Brauer Lab Final project, Spring 2016 finding are applicable to prejudice reduction needs further investigation. Lastly, Palluck and Green (2009) points out that laboratory interventions are often separated and abstracted from their real world modalities. They claim that participants interpret messages they receive in these studies differently depending on who delivers the message and in what manner. Therefore, laboratory studies eliminate larger institutions and social processes in which interventions are embedded, which might change the impact of the intervention. This leads us to look at the field of interventions for prejudice reduction that uses social norms. Prejudice reduction interventions based on social norms can be defined in three categories; educational interventions in schools, media and entertainment interventions, and peer influence or discussion programs. Reading interventions in schools is one of the biggest contributions to the field of prejudice reduction. In a series of studies, children have been assigned to read stories about other cultures (Wham, Barnhart & Cook, 1996), African, Native American, disabled people (Clunies Ross & O’Meara, 1989; Fisher, 1968; Hughes, Bigler & Levy, 2007; Yawkey, 1973), or about contact between different groups (Cameron & Rutland, 2006; Slone, Tarrasch & Hallis, 2000) with positive result. Reading interventions uses both descriptive and injunctive norms to influence children’s perception of others. One advantage of these interventions is that they usually evaluate longer than other field interventions (Palluck & Green, 2009). Examples where social norms in media and entertainment have been used are in children’s multicultural television series (Mays, Henderson, Seidman & Steiner, 1975) and as a radio soap opera (Paluck & Green, 2008). Because few of the programs used in media interventions are based on theory, it is difficult to draw broad lessons from the pattern of their findings according to Palluck and Green. However, the authors still argue that the results are in general positive. In Palluck and Green’s study of an intervention using radio soap opera in Rwanda, the researches found the program to affect the listeners’ behaviors. However, it did Charlotta Bergh Brauer Lab Final project, Spring 2016 little change to their personal beliefs, which indicates the need for other strategies to accomplish a full change in attitude. Finally, peer influence interventions such as Anti-Defamation League Peer Training program (Paluck, 2006), have shown that students are able to influence friends with public behaviors such as speaking out against biased jokes. One main limitation of this approach is that few field experiments have experimentally isolated the effects of normative communication and discussion. However, these findings indicate that social norms of peer discussion are promising intervention strategies. In conclusion, different interventions with social norms to reduce prejudice have been proven to have positive results. However, due to the fact that participants interpret the messages differently, the effectiveness of the interventions might be difficult to anticipate. Despite this, educational interventions in schools, media and entertainment interventions, and peer influence or discussion programs, have all shown to be promising techniques to reduce prejudice. In closing, both commitment and social norms seem to have potential for being effective prejudice reduction strategies. At this point, social norms have the strongest support in both experimental and field studies. Further investigation of the effectiveness of commitment is needed, by testing more interventions using commitment and by using other techniques than writing. Another suggestion for future interventions, would be to combine these two strategies. McKenzie-Mohr (2011) states that both commitment and social norms are effective in enhancing motivation to act differently, although they work in somewhat different ways. People with low motivation for consistence, would maybe be more willing to commit if they were also influenced by descriptive and injunctive social norms. It could be something for the Brauer Lab to find out. Charlotta Bergh Brauer Lab Final project, Spring 2016 References Asch, S. E. (1955). “Opinions and social pressure.” Scientific American, 193(5), 31–35. Cameron L. & Rutland A. (2006). Extended contact through story reading in school: reducing children’s prejudice towards the disabled. Journal of Social Issues 62, 469–88. Cialdini, R. B., Trost, M. R., & Newsom, J. T. (1995). Preference for consistency: The development of a valid measure and the discovery of surprising behavioral implications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 318–328. Clunies-Ross, G. & O’Meara, K. (1989). Changing the attitudes of students towards peers with disabilities. Aust. Psychol. 24, 273–84. Cooper, J., & Mackie, D. (1983). Cognitive dissonance in an intergroup context. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 44(3), 536-544. Crandall, C.S. & Stangor C. (2005). Conformity and prejudice. 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