In this article, authors Lawson, McDonough, and Bodle discuss
their social experiment aimed at identifying whether role-playing can be
effective at reducing prejudiced comments. The experiment was established similarly
to that of Plous (2000) in that the point was to not only inform students about
prejudice but also ways in which they can combat prejudice outside the
classroom. The object of Plous’ experiment was for the speaker of the exercise
to discuss a topic and inject a prejudiced statement at some point. The
responder’s role is to engage the speaker in a manner that does not make
him/her hostile or defensive. Coaches then gave feedback to the quality of the
response. The goal of Plous’ experiment was to confront prejudice to lead to
its reduction rather than reinforcement.
In this article’s experiment, the authors wanted to see if
the subjects who participated in a role-playing exercise were more or less
likely to effectively confront instances of prejudice than those subjects in
the control groups. The experiment included 61 students from three different
undergraduate courses (social psychology, police and society, and intro to psychology).
The social psychology students (23) were the ones exposed to the role-playing
exercise while the police and society (12) and into to psychology (26) were in
the control group and did not participate in the role-playing exercise. The
social psychology students kept a log for a week of all the instances of prejudice
they experienced in their daily lives. Prior to the role-playing exercise, all
participants took a pre-test consisting of 5 scenarios containing brief
background information and a prejudice statement. Each participant was asked to
write down how they would respond. Responses were coded as either being
effective or ineffective. For the role-playing exercise, 5 scenarios were
chosen and given to each group (4-5 students) so each participant could select
a different scenario previously unseen by the group. Someone would read the
scenario and include the prejudiced statement, a responder would retort, a
coach would provide feedback, and the remaining students were there to provide
dialog for the scenario. After discussion on which types of responses were most
effective, the students in the experiment were asked to go out and use these
techniques they learned in real life situations. They were then to record these
incidents in a second log. Afterward, all students took a post-test that was
identical to the pre-test.
The results of the experiment showed that those who
participated in the role-playing exercise demonstrated significantly higher
levels of effective responses in the post-test when compared to the pre-test.
Those students in the two control groups showed no significant changes between
the pre and post-tests. However, the intro to psychology students showed a
significant decrease in the number of effective responses from the pre to
post-test.
Critique:
This article’s findings suggest that role-playing can be an effective
tool at training the mind to respond in a certain way. I am not surprised those
who participated in an experiment where they were told what the right answers
look like did better on the post-test than those who didn’t have it spelled out
for them. The authors themselves even admit that even though their experiment
suggests role-playing works, they have no proof of its effectiveness in the real
world. As was pointed out by the authors in the article, the human response to
prejudice is similar to that of bystander intervention in an emergency. One has
to first identify an act as prejudice, decide it constitutes something harmful,
take responsibility for responding, and select the appropriate response. The
audience is another variable not discussed in the set-up of this scenario. One
will undoubtedly respond differently to family members, friends, and strangers
depending on the scenario at hand. I believe role-playing can be effective at
preparing the participant for a potential future scenario. However, the
effectiveness of the role-playing depends largely on the details of the
scenario. Much the same way war-gaming depends on the details in order to be
effective. Simply running participants through a couple exercises is by no
means enough training to be prepared for all possible future scenarios. But
like many of the other methods we’ve discussed so far, it will at least make
the participants more comfortable and knowledgeable by giving them a broader
base of experiences on which to draw.
Resources:
Lawson, T. J., McDonough, T. A., & Bodle, J. H. (2010).
Confronting prejudiced comments: Effectiveness of a role-playing exercise. Teaching
of Psychology, 37(4), 257-261.
Plous, S. (2000). Responding to overt displays of prejudice:
A role-playing exercise. Teaching of
Psychology, 27, 198–200.
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ReplyDeleteEric,
ReplyDeleteThank you for this summary. It was very interesting and I felt connected to the content in certain ways. In my experience, over the past seven years of working in college dorms including here at Mercyhurst, I have used role-playing many times in student conduct meetings. I found that in my specific job it is an effective way of communicating with difficult individuals who often start conversations in a defensive or biased tone. I do agree that to further develop this technique, training is needed.
Charles, I can definitely see how role-playing can be effective in improving one's interpersonal communication skills. I myself took part in a couple different role-playing exercises focusing on suicide prevention and discussing sexual assault/harassment with mock victims. It does give one an improved sense of confidence in handling similar situations in the future.
DeleteEric, this was very interesting to read and reminded me of the social psychology class that I took in my undergrad. I definitely agree with you in that it is not difficult to understand why the group that was given the correct responses did better than the other two groups. I think it would have been more effective if the test was a little more complex than that.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I was thinking it would have been interesting to see what would happen if for one of the control classes they instead gave one class bad instruction on how to "properly" engage a prejudiced commenter. I would assume the results of the post-test would indicate the poor training resulted in poorer overall scores. Which goes to show how important the structuring and guidance of role-playing is to the participants.
DeleteEric, where do you feel role playing is appropriate, say, for law enforcement? And do you think that immersion into the criminal mind would breed empathy?
ReplyDelete