Kedvelni vagy Tisztelni? Az előítéletek csökkentése a melegszívűség és a kompetencia dimenzióiban

Reducing Prejudice Through Dimensions Of Warmth and Competence

Abstract

Background and aims: The aim of most prejudice reduction programs is to promote sensitivity, that is, to reduce majority society’s hostility or antipathy towards a stigmatized group. Accordingly, such programs target or achieve change primarily in the perceived warmth dimension of prejudice. However, there is another dimension of prejudice, which is often neglected both in empirical and field interventions, and that is the perceived competence of a group, in other words, the extent to which we appreciate people for their capabilities. In the meantime, there are very few prejudice reduction programs that specifically address the promotion of a group’s perceived competence, even though that can be significant for the their educational and occupational integration. In the present paper, I aim to raise awareness to this gap and offer recommendations in this regard.
Methods: I review evidence-based prejudice reduction interventions that are frequently applied in the field and describe the characteristics and findings of corresponding empirical research. My aim is to evaluate these interventions and emphasize best and not so good practices. Additionally, I aim to point out weaknesses of interventions, which derive from focusing solely on warmth-related prejudice and from neglecting competence-related prejudice.
Results: The current review indicates that intervention research and practice pay scarce attention on reducing competence-related prejudice, which inadvertently risks reinforcing such prejudice. In light of this result, based on the analyzed strengths and weaknesses of interventions, I formulated a recommendation package, which could serve as a guideline to promote reduction of competence-related prejudice toward various societal groups (for example, LGBT, immigrants or Roma people) among the Hungarian majority society.
Discussion: Intergroup psychological qualities need to be acknowledged when designing and applying interventions. In the current work, as such quality, I analyzed the nature of prejudice.