Empatia e tomada de perspectiva e suas relações com o preconceito e o racismo

Abstract

Introduction: Prejudice is a psychological, cognitive and social phenomenon in which occurs a negative attribution or judgment that is imposed to an individual because of his or her belonging to a social group. Social, cultural and legal changes that aim to reduce racism, a specific form of prejudice, make its manifestations increasingly complex and subjective, even though its negative consequences and damages remain. In the context of Psychology, Allport’s contact hypothesis emerges and remains as one of the main sources that support means of combating or reducing prejudice. The contact hypothesis sustains that the establishment of contact can cause approximation and diminution of prejudice between different groups or individuals. In order to have beneficial effects, the contact must occur with: equality of status between the groups in the specific situation of the contact, common goals, cooperation between groups and supervision and support of authorities, laws or customs. The contact hypothesis and the reduction of prejudice present as its main mediators the affective and cognitive aspects and their most important representatives, namely, empathy and perspective-taking. Objective: To understand the relations between prejudice, contact, empathy, perspective-taking and the reduction of racial prejudice. Method: Based on an experiment conducted in the North American context, with a quasi-experimental, explanatory and transversal design, it was aimed to investigate the effects of contact, empathy and perspective taking on the reduction of racial prejudice. Two experiments were carried out. The first is a replication of the original experiment. In that, participants wrote a narrative essay about a day in the life of a black and young man portrayed in a photograph. The sample consisted of 40 undergraduate students aged between 19 and 24 years. Half of the sample received instructions based on perspective-taking other and the other half received instructions to stay objective and neutral. Subsequently, all participants responded the Implicit Association Test (IAT) about racial prejudice in its version for the computer. The essays elaborated by the participants were analyzed qualitatively with the computer program R. In the second experiment, a variation of the original experiment was performed. In that, participants filled the Empathy Inventory and then were instructed to write a narrative essay about a day in the life of a black and young man portrayed in a photograph. Half of the participants received instructions based on perspective-taking other and the other half was instructed to remain objective and neutral. Afterwards, all participants responded the Implicit Association Test (IAT) about racial prejudice in its computer version and completed the Interpersonal Contact Form. Results: In the first experiment, the IAT results showed neutrality in relation to the racial prejudice in the studied sample, that is, it was not found a bias of preference for white or black people. The analysis of the essays revealed the absence of negative stereotypes, the presence of contents that are part of the lives of the participants and a larger elaboration of the essays in the experimental group. In the second experiment, the IAT results also indicated neutrality, or lack of preference bias, in relation to the racial prejudice in the experimental and control conditions. In addition, positive and negative correlations were found between the Empathy Inventory and its subscales and the Interpersonal Contact Form. Discussion: In the first experiment, the neutrality in the IAT result suggests that white undergraduate students compose an age and social group that has low or neutral levels of racial prejudice. This circumstance can be partly explained by the growing discussion about this issue in the Brazilian context and the Brazilian government’s investment in policies that promote equality, access to higher education and strengthening of the identity of social groups. In addition, ponderations about the experimental conditions and in which ways the exercise of perspective-taking and empathy may have influenced the results of the IAT are discussed. Regarding the analysis of the essays, the content of the essays is discussed considering that they present absence or scarcity of significantly negative stereotypes about black people. Instead of negative stereotypes, aspects of the life of a young undergraduate student with difficulties arising from a routine were found. The differences in the contents of the experimental and control groups are discussed. In this sense, it is important to highlight the greater richness of details and the presence of subjective aspects, even in relation to negative aspects, presented by the experimental group when compared to the control group. In the second experiment, the hypothesis that there would be a correlation between the final result of the Empathy Inventory and the levels of implicit racial prejudice (the higher the empathy score, lower would be the implicit racism measured by the IAT) was not confirmed. It is possible that the size of the sample has made it impossible to confirm this hypothesis, a circumstance that suggests other researches about these variables. Furthermore, the neutrality and small variation of the IAT result under the experimental and control conditions may have impaired the correlation with the Empathy Inventory. Correlations between the Empathy Inventory and its subscales and the Interpersonal Contact Form are discussed in order to understand the relationships between contact and prejudice. From the mediation carried out by empathy and perspective taking, the joint and dynamic influences of cognitive, affective and behavioral factors on prejudice and racism are discussed.