TARGETING
PREJUDICE/STIGMA AT A
PUBLIC HEALTH LEVEL
Michael E. Levin, Jason Lillis, Jack Haeger &
Benjamin Pierce
THE BREADTH OF HUMAN SUFFERING…
 Prejudice and stigma af fects anyone we can group and apply
evaluative labels to
 Race, religion, sexual orientation, culture, mental/behavioral health
problems, illness, body type, political affiliation…
 Discrimination comes in many
 Forms: Enacted stigma, covert/overt racism, institutional,
microaggressions, self stigma…
 Settings: Social, employment, housing, judicial, healthcare,
education…
 And costs: conflicts, war, terrorism, physical health, psychological
health, access to resources…
ACT APPROACH TO PREJUDICE/STIGMA
Acceptance:
Present moment:
Values:
Reduce avoidant
prejudiced behaviors,
increased acceptance
of unwanted
reactions.
Increased awareness
of prejudiced
reactions
Clarifying values
related to
interactions with
stigmatized groups
Defusion:
Reduce literal,
evaluative functions
of prejudiced
thoughts and
inef fective rules.
Self-as-context:
Flexible per spective
taking and
compassion towards
self and other s
Committed action:
Building patterns of
behavior that suppor t
cultural awareness/
competency and
reduce discrimination
HOW DO WE SCALE ACT TO A PUBLIC
HEALTH LEVEL?
 What are the mechanisms for delivering ACT at this broad
scale level?
 Who would participate?
 Why would people participate and in what contexts?
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF ACT IN LARGE
SCALE PREJUDICE REDUCTION EFFORTS?
 Addressing psychological processes underlying breadth of
prejudiced behaviors.
 Changing the dominant cultural approach to prejudice.
 Integrating with other prejudice reduction ef forts.
TARGETING PREJUDICE AS A
GENERALIZED PROCESS
 Intervening on prejudice towards each group separately may
be impractical at a public health level
 Research shows prejudice can be conceptualized as a
generalized process
 Measures of prejudice are highly correlated and load onto a latent
variable
 Could ACT be applied to target prejudice as a generalized
process?
INFLEXIBILIT Y AND GENERALIZED
PREJUDICE STUDY
 Online survey with 604 college students
 Tested SEM model of predictors of generalized prejudice
Gay men
Obese
individuals
Neosexism
African
Americans
Substance
Abuse
Generalized
Prejudice
AAQ-S
Inflexibility
AAQ-S
Flexibility
Perspective
Taking
Empathic
Concern
CHANGING THE CULTURE’S APPROACH TO
PREJUDICE
 Emphasize external contingencies/motivations for being non prejudiced
 Legal/social punishment for discrimination and prejudiced
statements
 Injunctive norms regarding prejudice
 External motivation to control prejudice can increase :




Prejudice attitudes and behaviors
Ineffective suppression of prejudiced thoughts
Anxiety, anger and perceived threat from interracial interactions
Avoidance: sensitive topics, looking away from faces etc…
For a review see Butz & Plant, 2009
USING VALUES TO INCREASE INTERNAL
MOTIVATION
 Internal motivation to control prejudiced reactions
 Decreases prejudiced attitudes and behaviors
 Increased quality and quantity of intergroup contact
 More effective at inhibiting prejudiced reactions and making repairs
 Values work can
 Elaborate on internal, personally meaningful motivators related to
intergroup relations
 Clarify discrepancies between personal values and intergroup
relations
 Reduce “dead man” goals with intergroup relations
AVERSIVE RACISM AND IMPLICIT BIASES
 Automatic prejudiced reactions are common
 Spontaneous, outside of awareness, and difficult to control
 Implicit bias + social pressure = aversive racism
 Explicitly supporting egalitarian values and
 Being motivated not to seem prejudiced
 While continuing to have automatic prejudiced reactions
 Overt forms of discrimination may have decreased
 But more subtle forms of discrimination persist (employment , social,
helping behaviors, legal, etc…)
 Making prejudice more difficult to detect, ambiguous, chronic
INCREASING MINDFULNESS AND
ACCEPTANCE OF PREJUDICED REACTIONS
1. Increase awareness of automatic prejudice reactions
2. Explore negative consequences of trying to suppress these
reactions
3. Accept these reactions, without denying or acting on them
4. Defusing from the content of these thoughts
5. Re-orienting to chosen values and making commitments to
guide intergroup interactions
You are having prejudiced thoughts, it’s okay to and par t of your
histor y, and you can choose how to respond to them.
SOME INITIAL THOUGHTS FOR SCALING
 Access points
 Structured interventions in schools, worksite, etc…
 Community-based efforts
 Overt discussions in the culture:
 Negative effects of social pressure, personal values for prejudice
reduction
 Acknowledging prejudiced reactions from accepting and defused
stance
 Media: T V shows, books, movies, PSAs modeling these
processes
 Internet: “going viral”, hashtag campaigns, youtube clips, Ted talks
IMPORTANCE OF INTEGRATING WITH
OTHER EFFORTS
 We need to collaborate and integrate with other social justice
ef forts that
 Provide the content/context that ACT then help augment
 Have access points already developed, with integrated, ongoing
contact
 Have engaged local communities and stake holders
 Have systems/methods for implementation
 ACT could provide deeper psychological components
 Enhance intrinsic motivation to engage in such programs
 Increase awareness of and flexibility responding to psychological
reactions they might elicit
ENHANCING INTERGROUP CONTACT
EFFORTS
 Intergroup contact is ef fective in contexts that support
equality, cooperation and working towards a shared goal
 Other research shows
 Intergroup contact is not effective if not meaningful to the person
(Van
Dick et al., 2004)
 Internal motivation can improve quality and quantity of intergroup
contact, even when anxious or expecting it to go badly (Butz & Plant,
2009)
 Values could help people identify and connect with personally
meaningful reasons for engaging in intergroup interactions
 Other flexibility skills could help with reactions during contact events
ALLY TRAINING PROGRAMS
 Foster welcoming and supportive university environments for
LGBTQIAP (LGBT) students, faculty, and staf f
 Engaging community partners (e.g., students, faculty, organizations)
 Ally: Has awareness, knowledge, and skills to support those
experiencing discrimination, and advocates for social justice
 Post “ally” or “safe zone” stickers
 Balance of experiential & didactic exercises, with the goal of
situating allyship in personal values and cultivating empathy
 Cover knowledge (what), awareness (why), and skills (how to)
 ACT might reduce reactivity to knowledge, support awareness,
and enhance skills
DIVERSIT Y TRAINING
 Education ef forts include
 Raising awareness of prevalence, forms, and costs of prejudice
 Issues of privilege and potential of being prejudiced
 Maladaptive responses might occur
 Defensiveness: “I’m not racist”, getting angry, etc…
 Lack of responsibility: The problem is too prevalent and big for me to
do anything about it
 Avoidance: Feeling ashamed, avoiding the topic or certain groups
 Integrating ACT methods might promote a flexible response
 Acknowledging these factors and issues
 Without denying, avoiding, defending or giving up
 ACT for stigma among care providers is particularly promising
HOW CAN WE COLLABORATE?
 How to talk to these groups
 Avoid: “you are doing it wrong and we know what you should do”
 Explore what works, what the challenges are, where ACT might help
 Address misconceptions and pitfalls (e.g., “accepting racism”)
 How to promote these conversations
 Attend conferences
 Publish in relevant journals, blogs and related outlets (e.g., upworthy)
 Provide trainings and disseminate training materials
 What kind of data would engage others doing diversity work?
 Identify the outcomes that matter to these groups
 Consider other sources of information – training experiences, case
examples, etc..
DISCUSSION
 ACT has a key role in prejudice reduction ef forts
 How individuals can effectively respond to psychological reactions
 How to support internal motivation for prejudice reduction
 There are challenges in adapting and scaling up ACT to
ef fectively target prejudice
 We propose to focus on strategic partnerships with other
scaled ef forts
 And conducting research, training and other work that would help
build that