THE DIVERSITY MONOLOGUES: Increasing Understanding and Empathy, Decreasing Stereotypes and Prejudice

This chapter first briefly reviews the literature on stereotype and prejudice development and maintenance to show that common cognitive and psychological processes can cause intelligent and caring people to have erroneous, negative, and hurtful attitudes toward others. It describes a class project that developed to help the students decrease their negative thoughts and feelings toward outgroups and increase their commitment to equality and diversity education. Multiple and interacting methods and processes are involved in the formation and maintenance of stereotypes and prejudice. Stereotypes are formed through social categorization, with the specific stereotype content being influenced by processes such as illusory correlations, self-fulfilling prophecies, and faulty attributions. Many researchers have noted the limits of cognitive processes in prejudice reduction. Research indicates that empathy is related to many positive feelings and behaviors, whereas a lack of empathy is associated with negative feelings and behaviors.