From the Association for Psychological Science press release:<\/p>\n
Evolutionary psychologists suspect that prejudice is rooted in survival: Our distant ancestors had to avoid outsiders who might have carried disease. Research still shows that when people feel vulnerable to illness, they exhibit more bias toward stigmatized groups<\/strong>. But a new study in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science<\/em> suggests there might be a modern way to break that link<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We thought if we could alleviate concerns about disease, we could also alleviate the prejudice that arises from them,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d says Julie Y. Huang of the University of Toronto, about a study she conducted with Alexandra Sedlovskaya of Harvard University; Joshua M. Ackerman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Yale University\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s John A. Bargh. The group found that the sense of security derived through measures such as vaccination and hand washing can reduce bias against \u00e2\u20ac\u0153out\u00e2\u20ac\u009d groups, from immigrants to the obese<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
The researchers conducted three experiments. The first two (with 135 and 26 participants, respectively) looked at people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reactions to threats of the flu. In the first, some participants were already vaccinated, others not. Half the subjects\u00e2\u20ac\u201dincluding members of both groups\u00e2\u20ac\u201dread a cautionary passage about the flu. In experiment 2, all the participants had been vaccinated. They read a similar text, but some of them read one with a section saying the vaccine is effective; the others received only an explanation of how it functions. In both experiments, participants answered questionnaires assessing their level of prejudice\u00e2\u20ac\u201din the first, particularly toward immigrants, in the second, toward numerous groups, including crack addicts and obese people.<\/p>\n
The findings: In experiment 1, among those who read the text\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand were thus reminded of the disease threat\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe vaccinated showed less anti-immigrant sentiment than the unvaccinated. There was no significant difference among those who didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t read the passage. In experiment 2,\u00c2\u00a0those who got assurances of the vaccine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s effectiveness showed less disease-related bias. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Even when everyone is actually protected,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d comments Huang, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the perception that they are well protected attenuates prejudice.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
In the third experiment, with 26 undergraduate participants, half used a hand wipe to wipe their hands and the keyboard of a computer they were using. The others \u00c2\u00a0didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. The text they read included the statement that anti-bacterial hand wipes help protect against contagion. These students were assessed for their nervousness about germs\u00e2\u20ac\u201da signal of feeling vulnerable to disease\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand their feelings toward seven out-groups and two in-groups (undergraduates and their families). As expected, among those who did not wipe their hands, germ aversion correlated positively with aversion to stigmatized groups. But the germ-averse hand-wipers didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t express prejudice. None showed bias toward people like themselves and their loved ones.<\/p>\n
The study\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhich is unique in uniting evolutionary psychology, social cognitive psychology, and public health\u00e2\u20ac\u201dholds promise for reducing physical and social maladies at once. Write the authors, a public health intervention like vaccination or hand washing could be a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153modern treatment for [an] ancient affliction.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the Association for Psychological Science press release: Evolutionary psychologists suspect that prejudice is rooted in survival: Our distant ancestors had to avoid outsiders who might have carried disease. Research… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,10],"tags":[82,81,12,80],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions\/201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}