Fraudulent study on transgender prejudice is successfully replicated
by Roheeni Saxena
Amazon won a Golden Globe this year for its original series Transparent.
Amazon
In 2015, a study was published that claimed that reducing
prejudice against homosexual people was relatively easy. All it took was
a brief conversation with a stranger who was going door to door talking
about prejudice against homosexuals. Supposedly, participants’
attitudes remained changed up to three months after said conversation.
The study received widespread media coverage and was
considered groundbreaking because we knew so little about how to reduce
prejudice. Unfortunately, it turned out to be built largely on
fraudulent data, and the study was retracted.
Ironically, the researcher who uncovered the fraudulent data
in this first canvassing study, David Broockman, has now published his
own study on the same issue. It demonstrates that canvassing actually does
change participants’ attitudes toward transgender individuals and that
this change in attitudes persists for at least three months.
Prejudice against transgender people is pervasive in the US.
They’re significantly more likely to be victims of violent crimes, to
become homeless, and to experience health issues due to lack of adequate
medical care. However, research on prejudice against transgender people
is limited, and there are few field studies examining it. This new
study published by Broockman and Joshua Kalla is not only one of the
first to do so, but it identifies potential ways to attenuate it.
In the study, participants were randomized to receive a
canvasser who would talk to them about either transgender prejudice (the
experimental condition) or about recycling (the control condition). The
canvassers who talked about prejudice used a scripted conversation that
asked participants to recall a time when they were judged negatively,
to help them empathize with transgender people who experience prejudice.
This technique is known as “analogic perspective-taking.”
In addition, Broockman and Kalla also tested the “contact
hypothesis,” which suggests that exposure to a member of a stigmatized
group reduces prejudice toward that group. They tested it by including
transgender canvassers in their study.
Before and after the conversation, participants were given a
variety of survey questions. The researchers took care to conceal the
true nature of the survey, which probed attitudes about transgender
individuals. Participants showed no indications of suspicion about the
true nature of the survey.
The study found that participants who were assigned to a
canvasser who talked to them about transgender prejudice saw their
prejudice on this topic drop. The change also had practical
implications, as these participants became more supportive of a law that
would protect transgender people from discrimination. Interestingly,
the gender status of the canvasser did not affect the
results—non-transgender and transgender canvassers were equally
effective.
The researchers also decided to test whether exposure to a
short attack ad would reverse the effects of the intervention. So they
created an ad that promoted political stances that were prejudicial
against transgender people.
They found that this attack ad temporarily reduced the
positive effects of the canvassing intervention but that the
participants still maintained an overall more positive attitude toward
transgender people. Additionally, at the three-month follow-up,
participants who were shown this attack ad still maintained more
positive attitudes toward transgender people than they had prior to the
intervention.
Transgender individuals suffer a larger number of violent
crimes and receive far less adequate healthcare, largely due to
prejudices held against them. If it’s truly as easy to change someone’s
mind as having a conversation, maybe we can look forward to a drop in
these adverse consequences in the future.
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