Is discrimination widespread? Testing assumptions about bias on a university campus.

Discrimination has persisted in our society despite steady improvements in explicit attitudes toward marginalized social groups. The most common explanation for this apparent paradox is that due to implicit biases, most individuals behave in slightly discriminatory ways outside of their own awareness (the dispersed discrimination account). Another explanation holds that a numerical minority of individuals who are moderately or highly biased are responsible for most observed discriminatory behaviors (the concentrated discrimination account). We tested these 2 accounts against each other in a series of studies at a large, public university (total N = 16,600). In 4 large-scale surveys, students from marginalized groups reported that they generally felt welcome and respected on campus (albeit less so than nonmarginalized students) and that a numerical minority of their peers (around 20%) engage in subtle or explicit forms of discrimination. In 5 field experiments with 8 different samples, we manipulated the social group membership of trained confederates and measured the behaviors of naïve bystanders. The results showed that between 5% and 20% of the participants treated the confederates belonging to marginalized groups more negatively than nonmarginalized confederates. Our findings are inconsistent with the dispersed discrimination account but support the concentrated discrimination account. The Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Our results suggest that the Pareto principle also applies to discrimination, at least at the large, public university where the studies were conducted. We discuss implications for prodiversity initiatives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Exposure to peers' pro-diversity attitudes increases inclusion and reduces the achievement gap.

There is a dearth of empirically validated pro-diversity methods that effectively create a more inclusive social climate. We developed two scalable interventions that target people's perceptions of social norms by communicating to them that their peers hold pro-diversity attitudes and engage in inclusive behaviours. We tested the interventions in six randomized controlled trials at a large public university in the United States (total n = 2,490). Non-marginalized students exposed to our interventions reported more positive attitudes toward outgroups and greater appreciation of diversity, whereas marginalized students had an increased sense of belonging, reported being treated more inclusively by their peers and earned better grades. While many current pro-diversity initiatives focus on raising awareness about the fact that implicit bias and subtle discrimination are widespread, our findings spotlight the importance of drawing people's attention to their peers' pro-diversity values and attitudes to create positive and lasting effects on the social climate.

Incorporating Social-Marketing Insights Into Prejudice Research: Advancing Theory and Demonstrating Real-World Applications.

Prejudice researchers have proposed a number of methods to reduce prejudice, drawing on and, in turn, contributing to our theoretical understanding of prejudice. Despite this progress, relatively few of these methods have been shown to reliably improve intergroup relations in real-world settings, resulting in a gap between our theoretical understanding of prejudice and real-world applications of prejudice-reduction methods. In this article, we suggest that incorporating principles from another field, social marketing, into prejudice research can help address this gap. Specifically, we describe three social-marketing principles and discuss how each could be used by prejudice researchers. Several areas for future research inspired by these principles are discussed. We suggest that a hybrid approach to research that uses both theory-based and problem-based principles can provide additional tools for field practitioners aiming to improve intergroup relations while leading to new advances in social-psychological theory.