 But this is part three of lecture 13. So we now understand why prejudice exists and also why it persists, why it's so hard to change it. We've also already talked about the consequences of prejudice, especially the devastating consequences on minority groups. So it's about time to move on to the solution, right? So how can we reduce prejudice? Is this even possible? Well, for a long time, people thought that the answer of solving prejudice was contact. People should just be in contact with minority groups. People should interact with each other, and that will solve the problem. So that is basically the essence of the contact hypothesis. And definitely there's some truth in this view. And this is also something that was happening in the last couple of years, or since 1954, when the US Supreme Court ruled against segregation of schools. So there was desegregation in schools, and that meant that black children and white children were in contact with each other. Oftentimes for the very first time, they looked at each other like, wow, you look very different than I do. And they started to be in contact, and generally this had pretty good consequences. So being in contact with each other could help, but not always. Sometimes it also went ugly, and sometimes there were even more conflicts when these groups were brought into contact with each other. So there seems to be some requirements that this context should adhere to before it actually becomes productive and leads to a reduction of prejudice. And already in 1954, this man over here, Gordon Alport, tried to come up with ways and sort of a list of requirements that contact between groups should adhere to in order to reduce prejudice and also decrease conflict between groups. He actually made a very long list, but I will now zoom into four of the requirements that might be even the essence of the requirements. First of all, it's important that the groups experience equal status. So of course, already a very difficult one, because if you are part of a majority group, you automatically have higher status often than if you're part of a minority group. But within this specific subset, so for example, within the classroom, it's important that the children or the students experience that they have equal status. That is not that one group is superior to the others. It also should be supported by social norms. Of course, that should not be institutionalized discrimination in the school, so everybody should be treated in the same way. That's also very important. And then finally, these students need to experience mutual interdependence, and they should have common goals. And these two requirements are really important in understanding how prejudice can be reduced. So mutual interdependence basically means that these groups should be, the children in the group or the people in the group, should be able to rely on each other. Also rely on each other in order to get good outcomes. And working towards a common goal together is also very helpful in order to fade away the different parts of the group. So these optimal conditions were actually studied in one of the most well-known studies on intergroup conflict and harmony. It's the Robbers Cave experiment conducted by Sharif in 1961. And I absolutely love this experiment, so let me walk you through it. In the end, I will tell you why I love it so much. This experiment was done in the United States with 22 boys from a similar background, and they were invited for a camp. And this was an actual camp setting, so just like a normal camp that you might also have been part of in your life. And the first part of the camp, all the boys could interact with each other freely. So they were just one group doing campy stuff, like what you do in the camps, right? Then the second part of the experiment, they were divided into two different groups. And they could name themselves. So there was just a random division between the different boys into two groups, and one group called themselves the Rettlers, and the other group called themselves the Eagles. And they started to compete with each other. Like normal things, normal competition that you could also see on a camp. So for example, row pooling or playing other sports against each other, they also could win trophies and prizes. One of the prizes was actually Knives, which is a very silly prize, if you ask me, to give to young boys that are in competition. And the idea here was to create intergroup conflicts. That was actually the intention of Sharif. Well, this was very, very effective. So yes, there was competition, and it was very nasty. So things got ugly really fast. They beat each other up. They stole things from each other's stance. So yes, competition was there. But that's not where this experiment ended. And that's maybe why I love it so much, because all these old experiments are pretty nasty, right? All the outcomes have been very bad. But not for this experiment, because Sharif actually tried to create harmony again. And he tried to do so in different ways. First of all, he tried to bring the groups together again. And he said, well, you're now no longer Rettlers and Eagles. You can just play together again. That didn't work. They were still fighting. That was not a success. But then he implemented one of the optimal conditions that was created by Alport earlier. And he gave them a common goal. And he actually gave them a whole list of different goals that they had to achieve. For example, they had to fix a truck that both groups relied on in order to get the gear for their camp. So they both were mutually dependent on each other in order to fix this truck. They also couldn't do that with one group. They really needed all the boys to work together to get this truck working again. And so they had a whole bunch of different common goals that they had to work on together. So did this work? Yes, it worked. So at the end of the experiment, all these boys were friends again. And they actually drove home in this truck all together, one big happy group of friends. So it's a good outcome. It's a happy ending for an old psychology experiment. It's a miracle. So yes, this seems to work really well. And in the following years to come, this idea of the optimal conditions has been implemented in many different ways. For example, in the jigsaw classroom, which is actually sort of a methodology that can be used in school classes in which groups of children are placed together. And these groups, it's very important that there's a lot of diversity within the group. So very small, desegregated groups. And in these small groups, the children are dependent on each other for to learn the course material and also to perform well. So they really had to depend on each other for school performance and they had to work together very well. They had to cooperate and doing so really reduced prejudice. It promoted integration and also increased empathy from these children towards each other. So it was actually it's very efficient way of dealing with discrimination and prejudice in the classroom. And one of the key things that happens in the jigsaw classroom is that empathy is increased. And empathy is just such a core and essential element of reducing prejudice. It's just trying to see yourself in the shoes of the other person and being empathic. And if we do so, we already saw also in lecture 11, then we are more helpful towards that group. We're less judgmental. We don't engage in a fundamental attribution error so much that we recognize that there are situational pressures going on. So empathy is key. And one other way of increasing empathy might also be to get a sense for majority group people what it's like to experience discrimination yourself. This was at least the idea of Jane Elliott. You see her here. She is not a psychologist, not even a researcher. She's just a primary school teacher teaching third grade. So that means children of about eight or nine years old. And she did so in a very rural area in Iowa where there's basically only white kids living there. And she wanted to discuss the issues of discrimination and racism. And she wanted to do so because this was right after the murder of civil rights leader Martin Luther King. And she felt like there was still so much racist beliefs within the children of her group. And she wanted to confront them and she wanted to convince them that this is unfair. You shouldn't treat people differently based on the color of their skin. And she conducted an experiment. It's an experiment she really came up with herself. It's called the blue eyes, brown eyes experiment. And it's an anti-racism experiment with these young children in which they themselves got to experience discrimination. And also the devastating effects on your psychological well-being and also your school performance. And I will show you a short video clip and I think it's just such a brilliant way of decreasing racism and discrimination in young children. Please take a look. This is a special week. Does anybody know what it is? National Brotherhood Week. National Brotherhood Week. What's Brotherhood? Treat everyone as though he was your brother. And is there anyone in the United States that we do not treat as our brothers? Who? The black people. The black people. Who else? The Indians? Absolutely the Indians. Many places in the United States. How are black people treated? How are Indians treated? How are people who are of a different color than we are treated? They don't get anything in this world. Why is that? Because they're a different color. You think you know how I would feel to be judged by the color of your skin? I don't. Do you think you do? No. I don't think you would know how that felt unless you had been through it, would you? It might be interesting to judge people today by the color of their eyes. Would you like to try this? Yeah! Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Since I'm the teacher and I have blue eyes, I think maybe the blue-eyed people should be on top the first day. I mean the blue-eyed people are the better people in this room. Oh, yes they are. Blue-eyed people are smarter than brown-eyed people. This is a fact. The brown-eyed people do not get to use the drinking fountain. You'll have to use the vapor cups. You brown-eyed people are not to play with the blue-eyed people on the playground. The brown-eyed people in this room today are going to wear collars so that we can tell from a distance what color your eyes are. You ready, Laurie? You're brown-eyed. She's a brown-eyed. You begin to notice today that we spend a great deal of time waiting for brown-eyed people. I don't see the yardstick to you. What's the color of all the things? Hey, Mr. Like, you better keep that on your desk. Look, the brown-eyed people get out of hand. Oh! If the brown-eyed people get out of hand, that would be the thing to use. Who goes first to lunch? The blue-eyed people. Blue-eyed people may go back for seconds. Brown-eyed people do not. Brown-eyed. Don't you know? They're not smart. It seemed like when we were down on the bottom, everything bad was happening to us. The way they treated you felt like you didn't even want to try to do anything. It seemed like Mrs. Elliot was taking our best friends away from us. What happened at recess? Were two of you boys fighting? Russell called me names and I came in a gut. What did he call you? Brown-eyed. They always call us that. What's wrong with being called brown-eyed? It means they're all stupid. I watched what had been marvelous, cooperative, wonderful, thoughtful children turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating little third graders in a space of 15 minutes. Yesterday I told you that brown-eyed people aren't as good as blue-eyed people. That wasn't true. I lied to you yesterday. The truth is that brown-eyed people are better than blue-eyed people. Russell, where are your glasses? I forgot them. You forgot them? And what color are your eyes? Blue. Susan Ginder has brown eyes. She didn't forget her glasses. Russell Ring has blue eyes and what about his glasses? He forgot them. He forgot them. Yesterday we were visiting and Greg said, boy, I like to hit my little sister as hard as I can. That's fun. What does that tell you about blue-eyed people? They're naughty. The brown-eyed people may take off their collars and each of you may put your collar on a blue-eyed person. The brown-eyed people get five extra minutes of recess. You blue-eyed people are not allowed to be on the playground equipment. You blue-eyed people are not to play with the brown-eyed people. Brown-eyed people are better than blue-eyed people. They're smarter than blue-eyed people. And if you don't believe it, look at Brian. I use Orton Gillingham phonics. We use the card pack. The brown-eyed children win the low class the first day. And it took them five and a half minutes to get to the card pack. The second day it took them two and a half minutes. The only thing that had changed was the fact that now they are superior people. We went faster than I ever had any. We went faster than I ever had any. It took them yesterday. We were better than I ever had any. We were better than I ever had any. Think as well with the collars on. Four minutes and 18 seconds. How long did it take you yesterday? Three minutes. Three minutes. How long did it take you today? Four minutes and 18 seconds. What happened? One down. What were you thinking of? This. I hate today. Do I hate too? Because I'm blue-eyed. See, I am too. It's not funny. It's not fun. It's not pleasant. This is a filthy nasty word called discrimination. We're treating people a certain way because they are different from the rest of us. Is that fair? No. No. Nothing fair about it. We didn't say this was going to be a fair day, did we? No. And it isn't. It's a horrid day. Are you ready? What did you people who are wearing blue collars now find out today? I know what they felt like yesterday. I did too. How did they feel yesterday? Down. Like your chin up in the prison. Like you're throwing a key away. Should the color of some other person's eyes have anything to do with how you treat them? No. All right then, should the color of their skin? No. Should you judge people by the color of their skin? No. When you see a black man, or an Indian, or someone walking down the street, are you going to say, Look at that silly looking thing? No. Whether their skin is black or white? No. Or how you decide whether people are good or bad? No. Is that what makes people good or bad? No. I don't think we have any difference in the kind of person you are. No. And just like that, we have come to the end. Not only of this lecture, but of this entire course. And in lecture one, I told you that I had big hopes and aspirations for you in this course. I really hope that it was able to change your perspective. I hope that you would start seeing the world in a different way. I hope that you gain knowledge on how we work, how our brain works, and why we do what we do. And I hope I accomplished this, and that you understand yourself a little bit better, and that you understand the world that you live in a little bit better, that you have more empathy for yourself and for others. I had so much fun sharing all this knowledge with you, and I just want to thank you so much for being here with me.