Effects of Desensitization of Prejudiced Whites to Blacks upon Subjects' Stereotypes of Blacks

Abstract

O'Donnell and Wore11 (1973) found that desensitization reduced the anxiety and disgust experienced by prejudiced whites in interracial siruations. The present study investigated the effect of such desensitization upon subjects' racial stereotypes. The concept of stimulus generalization suggests that those traits which comprise the stereotype might be evaluated more positively following desensitization. If true, this would suggest that desensitization produces unplanned side which go beyond the specific goals of treatment. Subjects were 16 white male college student volunteers who were in the most prejudiced half of the population on Adorno's Ethnocentrism scale. All subjects were randomly assigned to one of four therapists. Each subject, with the aide of his therapist, constructed a 10-item hierarchy involving racial situations for use during desensitization. Half of the subjects were put through a standard desensitization procedure similar to that described by Paul (1966) except that the relaxation instructions were taped. The remaining subjects, in a placebo control group, were treated identically except that they received no relaxation induction but were simply exposed to the items in the hierarchy. All subjects received 5 treatment sessions over 18 days. All subjects took a semantic differential about 2 wk. before treatment and again during the week after the completion of treatment. This measure asked subjects to rate 28 trait-adjectives selected from previous stereotype studies on 10 separate bipolar scales. One scale was good-bad, another was characteristic-uncharacteriscic of Negroes. The remaining scales were for filler purposes. The 10 traits rated as most characteristic of blacks were considered to comprise a subject's stereotype. The average good-bad ratings of the stereotype adjectives were computed before and after treatment for all subjects. The average rating of the stereotype adjectives shifted in the good direction from 3.900 to 4.431 for the desensitization group and from 3.279 to 3.291 for the placebo group. Th~s shift was significantly greater for the desensitization group than for the placebo group (r = 2.37, 14 df, p = .05). Apparently subjects continued to think of blacks as, for instance, aggressive following treatment, but now regarded the trait aggressive more positively. This could have important implications for both client and therapist, who need to be informed of all of the effects of a therapeutic procedure before deciding whether to use it.