Intergroup Boundaries and Attitudes

Many prejudice reduction strategies involve linking the self to outgroup members. We tested the novel question of whether establishing a potent link with a single outgroup member can reduce explicit and implicit prejudice toward the outgroup as a whole. White participants completed a mock adoption procedure where they "adopted" a baby from another country. Three experiments showed that this single link fostered perceived overlap between the self and the ethnic outgroup. This overlap mediated the effect of the adoption manipulation on explicit prejudice, which was significantly reduced. Whereas the single link was insufficient to reduce implicit prejudice significantly when the self-outgroup member link was not practiced, repeatedly practicing this connection reduced prejudice significantly in comparison with a control group that had no connection to the outgroup member. Furthermore, unlike explicit attitudes, this effect was direct.