Reading Friendship Stories can Change Children's Attitudes Towards Stigmatized Groups
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/51982.php.
I thought that this was an interesting study that looked into trying to reduce kids from having a negative prejudice towards a person or others in a particular group. This study was primarily looking at children who were from the ages of five to eleven years old. I thought this was crucial for the study to use this age group, because this age group isn't quite as familiar with the world around them. If these kids find someone that is or others that are different from themselves like their skin color, those kids might do certain things like avoid them or make fun of them. This could show a negative prejudice that those kids might have about that person or others that belong to a certain group. I also think that these negative prejudices that these kids might have could have come from prejudices held by their parents. Most kids view their parents as role models in which these kids might reflect the same attitudes, like negative prejudice against a certain group, that their parents might have without the kids being aware of it.
This was how they put together this study in which they looked at kids in U.K. The people who put together the study decided to use stories that showed friendships between English kids and refugee kids, who are a part of this group that some in this area have negative prejudices towards. These kids were put into small groups in which they read these stories for once a week for six weeks for twenty minutes. What the researchers discovered from the kids who read these stories for those six weeks was that the English kids developed more positive rather than negative attitudes towards refugee kids. They also found out that most of these kids wanted to be friends with the refugee kids. I think that in the future when most of thes English kids are around refugees, they will more likely have an automatic positive attitude towards them rather than an uncomfortable and automatic negative attitude.
This study really reminded of an example that was used in one of our readings. This example was the one when a small number of people who were white participated in diversity education in which those people ended up having less anti-Black attitudes and having more friendships with black people as well as other things. The study and this example were similiar, because they both had people go through an experience which ended up changing their attitudes towards a certain group.
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That is a cool study. I was surprised that such a small change really had effects on the children's view of refugee children. I wonder with all the advertisments we see now where advertisers try to encorporate many races into a 30 second commercial to be politically correct if adults are also becoming more accepting?
ReplyDeleteI would have to argue with respects to the adults becoming more accepting, that it is unlikely. I think that adults have held their prejudices for such an extended period of time that the commercials you are talking about would probably not impact them in quite the same way children are impacted. There are many adults that probably find the commercials annoying and feel that they accomplish nothing. Very interesting study though. How nice would it be if we could start teaching are children like this from the very beginning?
ReplyDeleteI would have to agree, changing adults would take a whole lot more work. I have a very democratic grandfather who was raised to honor and respect his president. He also has the old racial attitude from his time. For him it was very conflicting to support Obama throughout his campaign. Now my grandfather has come around and he defends his president in conversation but you can tell he has dual attitudes about it. He has conformed to society's acceptance but inside he still has his beliefs. With children, they are easy. Like Watson said "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well reformed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select.."
ReplyDeleteI recently saw a commercial in which a young girl was hanging up posters of her lost puppy. A young adult male sees her hang it up and takes a picture of the poster with his phone, circulates the message, and then when the little girl get home from hanging up posters there is another young adult male sitting on her porch with the puppy. Obviously the little girl was ecstatic and the advertisement was for a certain cell-phone brand. After I saw the whole thing, I immediately wondered if the fact that the little girl was black and the fact that all of the young adult males portrayed in the commercial were white was intentional or not. Does it have any impact on the commercial at all? Does it make the commercial more meaningful or seem more empathetic and helpful? Does it make the commercial more memorable? I don't know if it was intentional but I don't think I would have wondered or picked up on it in the first place if I didn't think it held any significance.
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