Lights and shadows of counter-attitudinal strategies to reduce prejudice: Impact of the identity threat and prior ethnic orientations

Abstract

Two preregistered experiments compared the effect of a counter-attitudinal strategy with a control and a reflective condition (Experiment 1, n = 689) or an outgroup-variability condition (Experiment 2, n = 634) on attitudes toward Moroccan immigrants in Spain, exploring the role of identity threat in the process among participants with high (vs. low) racism and ethnocultural empathy. Results showed that the exposure to counter-attitudinal content threatened the identity of high-prejudiced individuals, which was associated with negative attitudes (e.g., less positive perceptions of morality, sociability and competence, less openness to alternative information about Moroccan immigration and more agreement with punitive political actions toward Moroccans) compared to the control, reflective and outgroup variability condition. The strategy that emphasizes the variability of the outgroup indirectly improved attitudes toward migrants by eliciting less identity threat among low-prejudiced participants. These findings suggest the need for different interventions depending on the characteristics of the target.