Vink, Isabelle (2022) Confronted with the Prejudice Paradox: Its Effects on Prejudice via a Cognitive Dissonance and Compassion Route. Master thesis, Psychology.
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Abstract
Whether immigrants do or do not assimilate to Western meritocratic values, they are met with disapproval either way. Previous research has dubbed this phenomenon the Prejudice Paradox. However, it is yet unknown what happens when people are made aware of this paradox. Therefore, this research aims to study whether prejudice towards immigrants can be lowered by making people aware of the sometimes-conflicting beliefs that are held about immigrants. More specifically, this study focuses on the immigrant group, Chinese students. The intervention was expected to work via two different pathways: a more self-focused pathway including cognitive dissonance and a more other-focused pathway including perceived unfairness and compassion. Prior prejudice was expected to moderate both pathways. The hypotheses were tested using an experimental between-subjects design with three different conditions in an online survey (n = 257) of first-year psychology students. The results indicated that confronting people with the prejudice paradox did not lead to significantly different levels of prejudice and discriminatory behaviour than being confronted with non-contradicting prejudiced beliefs. Contrary to our expectations, all conditions resulted in equal levels of cognitive dissonance, perceived unfairness, and compassion. Each of these variables did significantly negatively predict prejudice and discriminatory behavioural intentions. No support was found for either the self-focused or other-focused pathways as a whole. However, the compassion part of the other-focused pathway with prior prejudice as the moderator was significant. Instead of lowering prejudice, confronting people with the prejudice paradox increased it, suggesting that ingroup influence was more impactful than our attempt to reduce prejudice.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
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| Supervisor name: | Spears, R. |
| Degree programme: | Psychology |
| Differentiation route: | Applied Social Psychology (ASP) [Master Psychology] |
| Date Deposited: | 27 Jul 2022 09:18 |
| Last Modified: | 27 Jul 2022 09:18 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/1152 |
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