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Through a series of psychological experiments, this research examines how people learn about minority groups. It finds that negative feelings about minority group members are directly influenced by their feelings of majority group members. This study confirms, experimentally, that minority group biases can be overcome by increased exposure to minority groups.

Key findings

Associative learning effect:

• Adult participants were presented with a number of statements two groups of people. 67 per cent of statements described positive, but there were twice as many describing one group than the other. Participants showed no preference for groups in the initial stages of the experiment, nor did they express a preference at the end. They did, however, express a greater liking of the majority group during the training period of the experiment.
• When the above experiment was altered so that there was twice as many negative as positive statements about each group, participants expressed a dislike for the majority group and a preference for the minority group. This effect did not diminish towards the end of the experiment. In fact, increased exposure to the statements strengthened participants liking of the minority group.  

Child participants:

• In order to test how general these findings were, researchers explored the effect with a different group of participants - children. As with adults, children showed a liking of the majority group after an intermediate amount of exposure, and did not demonstrate any difference when exposed to very high or low levels.   

Influencing factors:

• It was found that altering the proportion of the sizes of the two groups in the experiment had a clear effect. It was found that altering the ratio of majority to minority group statements also influenced the size of the effect.
• Whilst the altering of the above variables might suggest a direct correlation with the strength of the effect, results suggest that associative learning is not solely driven by the number of statements, positive and negative, per group, but also by a comparison process that can be modelled mathematically.
• Two learning theories were examined: The Rescorla-Wagner model (RW) and the Van-Hamme and Wasserman model (VHW). Research found that VHW should be considered the more useful as it takes into account not merely the ratios of the size of groups and the numbers of statements, but also the effect of statements made about one group that directly influence the associations made about the other.  

Reducing prejudice:

• Importantly, this research provides a cognitive model that predicts how negative views about a minority group could be overcome. It suggests that social integration involving consistent unbiased exposure to majority and minority groups can overcome initial perceived differences.   

About the Study

Research was led by Dr Robin Murphy Lecturer, Department of Psychology, University College London. Participants were instructed to make judgments about two fictitious groups of people, eg 'group A' and 'group B' based on information provided. For adults the information comprised of sentences describing behaviour, whilst for children pictures were used.

Key words

Minority groups, stereotypes, prejudice, associative learning, social integration

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