IndexPrejudice reduction through imagined contactIntroductionLiterature reviewMethodsParticipantsMaterialsResultsDatasetDescriptive statisticsStatistical inferenceDiscussionImagined contact has been shown to be an effective method of prejudice reduction when no other options are available . Crips, Turner, and Lambert (2007) previously studied the effects of imagined contact with outgroup members on prejudice toward that outgroup. This study replicates that of Crisp and colleagues regarding outgroup anxiety toward Muslims. We asked our participants to imagine first contact with a Muslim stranger or a non-described neutral stranger. Participants then reported their comfort level working with various demographic groups, including Muslims. The data showed no significant reduction in the experimental condition, therefore not supporting the findings of Crisp and colleagues (2007). However, some moderating factors, such as political orientation or general anxiety levels, have significant effects on the level of comfort with Muslims. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Reducing Prejudice Through Imaginary ContactIntroductionThe United States is divisive right now on numerous issues; prejudice and discrimination are at the center of many of these political and social debates. While many people are interested in an in-depth discussion on these issues, few suggest real progress. However, one tool for reducing prejudice between groups, especially with an outgroup, is intergroup contact. An extension of contact – imagined contact in which participants imagine interacting with a member of another group – is more convenient. Imaginary contact has the potential to fill knowledge gaps and reduce prejudice, but only if it is a truly effective and genuine phenomenon. Literature Review Contact between members of different groups should reduce intergroup hostilities through the promotion of positive intergroup attitudes, but only under certain conditions (Allport, 1954). According to Allport, these conditions include equality of status and cooperation towards common goals and, above all, positive interaction (1954). There are two mechanisms of intergroup contact that could reduce prejudice under the right circumstances. The first mechanism is the reduction of intergroup anxiety. Intergroup anxiety primarily reduces the desirability of initiating intergroup contact by increasing prejudice (Stephan & Stephan 1985). Intergroup anxiety arises from negative expectations, but not necessarily from prior experiences, of rejection or discrimination (Stephan & Stephan, 1985). According to Stephan and Stephan, successful group contact as outlined by the conditions established by Allport (1954) should result in groups realizing that they have no reason to fear each other, reducing intergroup anxiety and prejudice. The second mechanism is reduction through change in affect. and cognitive consequences: perceptions, stereotypes, and judgments about a group (Crisp, Turner, & Lambert, 2007). Affecting these factors reduces prejudice by counteracting “the outgroup homogeneity effect” (Quattrone and Jones, 1980). This effect is observed when people perceive outgroup members as more homogeneous than ingroup members (Quattrone & Jones, 1980). When there is positive contact, people are more likely to see members of other groups as individuals, rather than attributing group characteristics ( Crisp et al., 2007 ).However, the effect would be smaller if the group's previous characteristics were positive or if the contact was negative (Crisp et al., 2007). Reducing prejudice through increasing variability in outgroup trait descriptions has been found to reduce tensions between Hindus and Muslims in Bangladesh ( Islam & Hewstone, 1993 ), which is relevant to this study's focus on Muslims as outgroup. Real contact may not always be feasible as a tool for reducing intergroup prejudice. Crips and colleagues theorized that imagining contact, rather than direct contact, can also reduce intergroup prejudice (2007). Crisp, Stathi, Turner, and Husnu also noted that imagined contact has four strengths over Allport's direct contact: it can be used in situations where actual or prolonged contact is not possible, it is a cheap and accessible treatment, it is safe, and may make people more open to positive interactions in the future (2009). Imagining contact reduces prejudice through the two mechanisms described above by activating the associated knowledge structures of the mind (Crisp et al., 2007). If contact is successful, concepts associated with that successful interaction should be activated, such as comfort – an indication of reduced intergroup anxiety – and increased trait variance – changing perceptions, stereotypes, and judgments about a group ( Crisp et al., 2007). When thinking about the outgroup, the activated concepts should cause people to refer to any positive interaction and would influence the perception of outgroups. Bargh and colleagues believe that thinking about social categories can generate negative intergroup attitudes and behaviors, especially when thinking about an outgroup, and can trigger negative associated knowledge structures (1996). This finding may indicate an important caveat in this study. However, Crisp and colleagues believe that thinking about the interaction itself rather than an outgroup category and placing thoughts in the context of the interaction – how they behave towards the interaction partner and vice versa – would counteract the triggering of negative attitudes (2007 ). Crisp and colleagues conducted a study in which college participants were asked to imagine an outdoor scene (the control group) or contact with an older person (the experimental group) (2007). Participants in the experimental condition were asked to list several ways in which they could categorize the imagined older person after an imagined conversation (Crisp et al., 2007). After this imaginary contact, all participants were told that researchers might conduct a study in the near future with a local elderly care home, and were asked to rate their preference for working with a young person and an elderly person on a Likert-1-9. type scale (1 = not at all, 9 = very much) to assess the suitability of matches in the researchers' follow-up study (Crisp et al., 2007). Crisp and colleagues found that while in the control group there was significant intergroup bias against the outgroup (older people), participants in the experimental group showed no significant differences between ratings of the ingroup (young people) and the outgroup (older people) on work preferences. (2007). Crips and colleagues also found similar effects when participants were asked to imagine homosexuals as an outgroup; intergroup anxiety was reduced and variability of perceptions increased (2007). Further research on imagined contact has shown that it is more effective when a mental representation of the contact scenario is developed and/or when the outgroup partner is typicaloutgroup rather than atypical (Asbrock, Gutenbrunner, & Wagner, 2013). Asbrock and colleagues (2013) were interested in how this might apply to people with different personality traits, such as those who endorse right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO). The researchers concluded that those with a high level of RWA indicated lower levels of negative emotions toward Turks and a greater willingness to engage in future contact with Roma, both after imagined contact (Asbrock, Gutenbrunner, & Wagner, 2013) . While those high in SDO showed less negative emotions after imagined contact with Turks, they did not feel more willing to engage in social contact with Roma (Asbrock, Gutenbrunner, & Wagner, 2013). This finding sheds light on a significant criticism of imagined contact, which concerns the possibility that for many participants, although it decreases self-reported negative emotions toward outgroups, it may not change behaviors. This study is designed to examine the reliability of these findings ( Crisp et al., 2007 ) when applied to college students who imagined interacting with people of the Muslim faith. After reviewing the current literature, the target outgroup for prejudice reduction through imagined contact was Muslims; this group has been subject to discrimination in recent years. This study hypothesizes that imagined contact with a Muslim, compared to imagining neutral contact, will decrease prejudice as measured by comfort levels working with a Muslim, as operationalized by Crisp and colleagues (2007). Methods This study is a conceptual replication of Crisp, Turner, and Lambert's (2007) first experiment. The study is a conceptual rather than direct replication due to time constraints, demographic differences between Claremont and the original experiment's subject group, and differing interest in the measured group for bias. Participants The group of participants consisted of American university students, specifically students attending one of the Claremont Colleges. We recruited participants via social media to invite them to participate in a Qualtrics survey, targeting Claremont Colleges student social media circles. Of the 165 participants who responded to the survey, 48 finished. Three participants were excluded from the data analysis, as further explained in the results section, resulting in 45 observations being subjected to data analysis. Materials The survey platform was Qualtrics, making the survey more efficient and easily disseminated to our participant pool. The study was between-subjects design. In the experimental condition, participants were asked to imagine contact with a Muslim. In the control condition, participants were asked to imagine contact with a non-described stranger. This scenario is a departure from Crisp's original study, and colleagues (2007) asked participants to imagine an “outdoor scene” as a control. The study used an undescribed stranger so that we could control for the effect of simply imagining contact with any person, rather than a specific outgroup. According to the availability heuristic theory, the imagined stranger should be the most typical member – and therefore a member of the ingroup – instead of imagining a Muslim (Kahneman & Tversky, 1986), creating a salient contrast between our experimental group and the control one. group. Therefore, the independent variable of interest is the group to which the participants belonged. The dependent variable was participant-reported prejudiceagainst Muslims. Prejudice was operationalized through measuring self-reported comfort level in working with Muslims, one of the scales used in Crips and colleagues' (2007) original study, except with the outgroup changed from elders to Muslims. The scale was also shortened from a 9-point Likert scale to a standard 7-point Likert scale to make it easier for participants to choose a comfort level. After participants signed the consent form, participants were asked filler questions, mostly about demographics such as age. We created two sets of instructions, designed to invoke participants' imagination of a detailed interaction with an outgroup member, or their imagination of an interaction with an undescribed stranger. Participants assigned to the imagined contact condition were asked the following question: “We would like you to take a minute to imagine meeting a Muslim for the first time. Imagine what they look like, the conversation that follows, and from what you learn, all the different ways you might categorize them into different groups of people. Participants assigned to the control condition were asked: “We would like you to take a minute to imagine meeting a stranger for the first time. Imagine what they look like, the conversation that follows, and from what you learn, all the different ways you might categorize them into different groups of people. Participants were also asked to “List the different ways you might categorize the stranger following the conversation you just imagined.” In both conditions, participants were given space to write down how they imagined the scene. Minimum character validation was implemented to ensure that participants were actually participating in the activity. This task was designed to strengthen the effect of imagining an interaction. Following this manipulation, participants completed a measure assessing their level of intergroup prejudice. They were told that researchers “may shortly conduct a study in collaboration with a local mosque in which we will have non-Muslims converse with other non-Muslims, Muslims converse with other Muslims, or non-Muslims converse with Muslims. We are exploring whether people would be willing to take part in a “conversation” study of this type (it would be conducted in the psychology department, last 20 minutes, and you would receive $5). If you were to sign up for this study, you can rate your comfort level with each of the following pairings. Please note that this is NOT a commitment to participate. We would just like to gauge people's interest. All responses will be confidential. Please respond openly and honestly." Participants were asked to indicate their preference for working with another non-Muslim (pair "Non-Non") and then their preference for working with a Muslim (pair "Muslim -Not") on a 7-point scale (1 = not at all, 7 = very much). A rating scale for the "Muslim-Muslim" pairing was included to reinforce the impression that Muslims were also asked same questions in preparation for this purported future study. These pertinent questions were asked along with filler questions regarding the comfort of working with Christians, Whites, Asians, and people of the opposite sex. After completing the dependency measure, participants were asked what they thought the purpose of the study was, to determine whether they suspected the pretest was intended to measure demand characteristics. In the final part of the survey, participants provided demographic information(see Appendix AG). Results. Data Setup Of the 165 participants registered on Qualtrics, 48 ​​participants completed all questions. A participant who spent less than 5 seconds imagining contact was excluded from the initial data set (the threshold was 5 seconds imagining contact and 10 seconds answering questions about the comfort of working with members of different groups). This threshold was chosen because if the study required participants to actually take a full minute as indicated in the survey to imagine a Muslim or foreigner, most participants would be excluded from the data analysis. From the initial summary statistics of time taken, five seconds was chosen as the threshold that allowed sufficient time to imagine a contact scenario. When processing the dataset, one participant who guessed the hypothesis correctly was eliminated, as was one participant who identified as Muslim. , since the interest is whether imagining contact with Muslims would reduce prejudice for non-Muslims, not for Muslims, since they are already part of the targeted outgroup. Descriptive Statistics For descriptive statistics, approximately 55% of participants were randomly assigned to imagine interacting with a Muslim. In both experimental groups, the level of comfort when working with a Muslim on a 7-point Likert-type scale - with higher numerical values ​​indicating greater comfort - was M = 4.91, SD = 2.24 . When participants imagined interacting with a Muslim, comfort level had M = 4.56, SD = 2.33. When participants imagined interacting with a stranger, comfort levels had M = 5.35, SD = 2.11. Although it seems to imagine that a Muslim actually decreases comfort levels, as the statistical inference shows that they are not statistically significant (see Appendix H). Statistical inference For statistical inference, data were analyzed with multivariable regressions. Crisp and colleagues (2007) used a similar regression method to analyze data from one of their experiments. Prejudice, operationalized as non-Muslims' comfort level when working with Muslims, was measured on a Likert-type scale from 1 to 7, with a higher score indicating greater comfort; this variable is also our explained variable. Our main explanatory variable of interest is the foreign_Muslim dummy (1 = imagined Muslim, 0 = imagined foreign). Because the value of strange_muslim is randomized across participants, no omitted variables can influence our estimated effect of imagining a foreigner versus imagining a Muslim. However, two additional variables were held constant to obtain the most accurate effect of imagining a foreigner or a Muslim: comfortability of working with non-Muslims (nonmuslimwork) and political views (politics). The convenience of working with non-Muslims was chosen because it may affect comfort; if someone is naturally uncomfortable working with anyone, regardless of religion, then one would expect them to have difficulty working with a Muslim due to preferences unrelated to religion. Politics was held constant because politically conservative people are more likely to show lower comfort in the presence of outgroup members (insert quote); the effect of muslim_stranger is best predicted when policy is held constant. After verifying the correct functional form and possible variance errors with a Breusch-Pagan test, the final regression function is the following (β0 is the intercept and ui. is the error term): comforti.= β0.