Developing & Testing the Psychology of the Anne Frank Trust's Prejudice Program

Social psychology has made enormous progress in understanding factors that can reduce prejudice. In particular, intergroup contact theory has been tested extensively to show how contact between different groups can help to reduce majority group members' prejudices against particular minorities (Pettigrew et al, 2011). However, as the west becomes increasingly diverse this approach to prejudice reduction seems increasingly inadequate. We cannot be confident which groups will be those that are depicted as enemies, are stereotyped negatively, or become stigmatized. Therefore, the challenge is to tackle not just specific prejudices, but the mechanisms and processes that allow prejudices of all kinds to take root. This means we need to develop broader but still powerful techniques that use different psychological avenues rather than relying on intergroup contact, or challenging specific stereotypes.
The proposed research, in partnership with the Anne Frank Trust (AFT), will examine psychological processes that enable children to generalise their knowledge from one context (in this case Anne Frank's story and the holocaust) to prejudice more generally. In other words, whether and how it is possible to build children's capacity to recognise and resist prejudice of all types.