Reducing ethnic prejudice by public campaigns: an evaluation of a present and a new campaign

Most Western governments consider it their responsibility to counteract ethnic prejudice and discrimination, and they sometimes instigate persuasive communication programmes to achieve this aim. Generally, these campaigns do not have the desired effects possibly because designers of such persuasive communication programs have ignored relevant social-psychological theoretical insights concerning prejudice. In this experiment, a present campaign (launched by the British Commission for Racial Equality) and a new campaign (developed by us) were evaluated. We hypothesized that our campaign would lead to lower levels of prejudice than the present campaign, because when designing our campaign relevant theoretical insights were more sufficiently taken into account. White participants (n=190) were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions or to the control condition. Those in the experimental conditions were exposed to either the present campaign or the new campaign before completing a questionnaire about ethnic minorities. Participants in the control condition were not exposed to a campaign. Results supported the hypothesis and some implications for designing campaigns are discussed.