A brief diversity training: Raising awareness of ingroup privilege to improve attitudes towards disadvantaged outgroups.

Abstract

Diversity training is a popular strategy to reduce prejudice within educational settings. However, in practice, diversity training rarely relies on social-psychological theory, and research on its effectiveness in real-world settings is scarce. Previous research regarding diversity training has particularly neglected an important theoretical concept: privilege as the counterpart of discrimination. Therefore, we developed a diversity training aiming to increase awareness of ingroup privilege, using an intersectional approach to teach participants the complex interaction between privilege and oppression. We randomly allocated students of educational science (N= 112) to a repeated-measures (pre-test, post-test, follow-up) control-group design. Compared with the control group, training participants showed a significant increase in awareness of ingroup privilege 1 week after the training, whereas there was no change in awareness of discrimination. Furthermore, increased awareness of ingroup privilege 1 week after the training mediated improved outgroup attitudes (i.e., more positive outgroup feelings towards immigrants and refugees, reduced subtle prejudice towards immigrants and reduced homonegativity) 2 weeks after the training.