From the University of Kent press release via AlphaGalileo:<\/p>\n
Psychologists have shown that diversity promotes tolerance towards different groups if it catches people by surprise<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
In a paper published by PLoS ONE<\/em>, Dr Milica Vasiljevic of the University of Kent and Professor Richard Crisp of the University of Sheffield explain how they conducted a series of experiments in which participants (British undergraduates) thought of surprising combinations of social categories such as overweight model, rich student, female firefighter or male midwife.<\/p>\n
Thinking of people with a surprising, unfamiliar background led to a reduction of prejudice towards multiple stigmatised groups such as the elderly, disabled, asylum seekers, HIV patients, or gay men<\/strong>. It also fostered generalised tolerance and egalitarian beliefs.<\/p>\n
Importantly, through a field test in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, a region with a history of violent ethnic conflict, the researchers demonstrated that a brief and cost-effective intervention based on this technique can increase trust and reconciliatory tendencies towards multiple ethnic groups such as Gypsies, Albanians, Serbs and Greeks<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
The research also demonstrated that considering people with a surprising background can encourage lateral thinking and lead to more openness and greater cognitive flexibility.<\/p>\n
Dr Vasiljevic said: \u2018Promoting tolerance for diversity is one of the key challenges the UK and other countries are facing<\/strong>. However, for decades the problem of how to achieve tolerance towards multiple groups in society has eluded scientists. This novel intervention presents a first step towards developing viable intervention strategies that target prejudice towards more than one group in society, with the aim of promoting a more tolerant society in general.\u2019<\/p>\n
Professor Crisp added: \u2018The success of this novel task underscores the importance of cognitive factors in effects to reduce prejudice<\/strong>, and highlights the need to challenge not only negative beliefs about specific social groups, but also the way in which we think about groups in general.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the University of Kent press release via AlphaGalileo: Psychologists have shown that diversity promotes tolerance towards different groups if it catches people by surprise. In a paper published by… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,60],"tags":[300,81,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11775"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11775"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11833,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11775\/revisions\/11833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}