Study Offers Path To Smoother Interracial Interactions

 EVANSTON, Il -- Despite making legal and social strides toward racial equality in the last few decades, expressions of racial bias are still pervasive in contemporary society. A new study from the University of Cologne andNorthwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences looks at the most subtle indicators of racial tension and suggests that walking in another person's shoes is one key to diffusing this friction.

The new research shows how the act of perspective taking – the contemplation of another's psychological experience – positively affects interactions between people of different races. Although these days the expression of overt racial biases has become increasingly uncommon, a sizable body of research has documented the fact that more covert forms of bias are still quite commonplace. For example, racial bias is often expressed in subtle, nonverbal behavior that can adversely influence the quality of interracial interactions.

This new study specifically examined interactions between black and non-black individuals and found that these subtle forms of bias can be reduced or eliminated simply by having individuals take the perspective of a member of a different racial group before engaging in an interaction with that person. The benefits of perspective taking were comprehensive: perspective takers displayed fewer expressions of bias in their facial expressions, avoidance tendencies, and interpersonal behaviors in a subsequent interracial interaction.

"Though society has become more sensitive to obvious expressions of racial bias, many people show subtle biases without even being aware that their prejudices are leaking out when encountering someone of a different race," said Professor Adam D. Galinsky, co-author and Morris and Alice Kaplan Professor of Ethics and Decision in Management at the Kellogg School. "Our research finds that taking on another person's perspective can help decrease these automatic and subtle expressions of racial bias and foster more positive social relationships overall."

In a series of five experiments, the authors examined the ways that consciously considering the perspective of members of another race, for example, by writing a day in the life essay from the perspective of a young black male, affected their psychological propensities and actual behavior towards members of the other race.

One experiment explicitly looked at how perspective taking reduces basic avoidance tendencies with people of a different race. Some participants were asked to adopt the perspective of a young black male, whereas others in a control group were not. Then, all participants had to set up two chairs for an interview with a research assistant, either named "Jake" or "Tyrone" depending on the condition.

"Participants who were in the perspective-taking condition and who expected to interact with Tyrone, whose name suggested he was black, placed the two chairs closer together than did those who were in the control group," said Andrew Todd, lead author and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cologne. "This experiment demonstrates that first putting oneself in another's shoes, in this case those of a young black male, can lead to more approach behaviors when interacting with a person of another race."

The final experiment most directly addressed the interpersonal consequences of perspective taking by having non-black participants interact face-to-face with a black interviewer. These videotaped interactions were coded, and those participants in the perspective-taking condition engaged in more positive non-verbal behaviors – they displayed greater smiling, increased eye contact, less fidgeting, and an "approach" body posture (leaning in versus backing away from the person). Importantly, the black interviewer, who was blind to the experimental hypotheses and conditions, subjectively rated her interactions with perspective-takers more positively than baseline participants.

"Perspective taking is one strategy for creating more positive reactions and enriching relationships between races," said Galinsky. "We believe this study could help lay the groundwork for building effective intergroup relations programs and workshops for the classroom and the workplace."

The new study, "Perspective Taking Combats Automatic Expressions of Racial Bias," will be published in the June 2011 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The paper was also co-authored by Galen Bodenhausen, the Lawyer Taylor Professor of Psychology at the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences and a professor of marketing at Kellogg, andJennifer Richeson, a professor of social psychology at the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences and faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research.