A teacher-led vicarious contact intervention in culturally mixed classrooms with in- and outgroup role models of intergroup friendship

Publication date: Available online 23 July 2019Source: Journal of School PsychologyAuthor(s): Viivi Mäkinen, Karmela Liebkind, Inga Jasinskaja-Lahti, Tuuli Anna RenvikAbstractExisting prejudice-reduction interventions in schools mainly target majority students and are mostly conducted by researchers, which limits their use for anti-discriminatory practices in culturally mixed schools. We tested a teacher-led intervention aiming at prejudice-reduction among both minority and majority adolescents through vicarious contact. The effects of indirect vicarious contact rest on observed ingroup role models of intergroup contact who have positive attitudes towards the outgroup, and vice versa. However, the specific impact of vicarious contact exerted by outgroup role models in comparison with ingroup role models has never been studied in interventions conducted in naturalistic school settings. To fill these gaps, a field experiment was conducted among secondary school students in Finland (Nmajority = 437; Nminority = 146). The experiment consisted of two stages, between which the ethnic status of the role models (majority vs minority) in stories read during the intervention sessions was changed. This was done to explore the impact of the in- and outgroup role models after the first stage, and to test the overall effect of the intervention on out-group attitudes and perceived in- and outgroup norms after participants were presented with both majority and minority storytellers ...
Source: Journal of School Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research