Participants were then asked to complete a survey based on the Race Essentialism Scale, which seeks to assess “participants’ agreement with the view that race is unchangeable and biologically determined.”
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The second highlighted individual characteristics: “We must look beyond skin color and understand the person within, to see each person as an individual who is part of the larger group.” One reading emphasized the distinctiveness of different groups with sentences like this one:Įach group has its own talents, as well as its own problems, and by acknowledging both these strengths and weaknesses, we validate the identity of each group and we recognize its existence and its importance to the social fabric. In one study, they gave participants a pair of readings (in addition to a control-condition statement) promoting a diversity component of a potential university strategic plan. Recently, Skidmore College psychologist Leigh Wilton was part of a team that tested out two different approaches to tackling essentialism. That’s a question social scientists have been tackling for a long time. If we want to understand people, we need focus on individual words and actions, not their group identity.īut how? If stereotyping is so powerful that it can serve as the basis of an entire social system that required a Civil Rights movement to overturn, what can we do as individuals to see other people without prejudice? Deflating essentialism Martin Luther King, Jr., famously said during his 1963 speech at the March on Washington that he dreamed that his “four little children will one day live in a world where they will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” King was arguing that his children should be evaluated as individuals rather than as archetypes of a racial group. Many whites in the Jim Crow South, for instance, falsely believed that skin color and race determined someone’s character, behavior, and intelligence. Racial segregation results from a widespread belief in racial essentialism. This idea that group membership determines innate qualities is called “essentialism.”
Racial stereotyping, for instance, comes from the belief that membership in a racial group defines someone on a range of characteristics, including their behavior. The GGSC's Bridging Differences initiative aims to help address the urgent issue of political and cultural polarization.ĭo you work to help people or groups bridge their differences, whether as a mediator, organization leader, educator, politician, workplace manager, or otherwise? Fill out this short survey and let us know how we can help.īut heuristics can lead us to make potentially damaging assumptions about other people. If you are planning a trip to upstate New York in the winter, it’s not a bad idea to bring snow boots. If you see a creature with feathers sitting on a tree branch, it probably does fly and eat worms. Psychologists call our mental shortcuts “heuristics”-and we need them to help our brains navigate the world. We can find some answers in the research-and today we can see those scientific insights being put to the real-world test by bridge-building organizations around the United States. Join us to bridge differences in your work, community, and life. What psychological forces drive us to do that, even when stereotyping other people is against our values? How can we teach ourselves to overlook group stereotypes and instead listen to individual stories?įree online, starting October 5, 2021: Learn research-based strategies for connecting across divides. It might seem hard to argue with the idea that we should focus on what individuals say and do and believe, instead of unthinkingly inferring those things from their group membership-but, in fact, we use group affiliation to evaluate individuals all the time. The entire effort was primarily based on Davis’s ability to connect with them one on one. The encounter set Davis off on a crusade-he went on to befriend and convince over 200 members of the KKK to leave the organization. This story reveals a crucial skill for building bridges between different kinds of people: focusing on individual characteristics rather than group identity. Ultimately, Davis discovered, the man was kicked out of the local KKK chapter. From the GGSC to your bookshelf: 30 science-backed tools for well-being.ĭespite being a Klansman, the man became a regular at Davis’s performances, because he learned to see him as a great individual piano player, rather than through the lens of group stereotypes.
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