Unjudge Someone: Human Library as a Tool to Reduce Prejudice toward Stigmatized Group Members

Abstract

Human Library (HL) is a nonprofit community event aimed at increasing awareness and reduction of prejudice toward stigmatized groups in the society. HL implements an unusual methodology in the format of a pretend ‘library’ where HL attendants so-called ‘Readers’ engage in short, face-to-face, direct contact with so-called ‘Books’ who are real individuals from various stigmatized social groups. Although HL has been widely used in various contexts since 2000’s and is recommended as the best practice of integration by European Commission, empirical research testing its effectiveness is limited. Our study presented the findings from four consecutive HL events conducted from 2016 to 2019 in Turkey (total N = 534). Including various control groups, we tested the effectiveness of HL as a direct intergroup contact intervention on affective (trust, empathy), cognitive (knowledge), and behavioral (e.g., willingness to talk to outgroup members) aspects of outgroup attitudes. Findings demonstrated that while overall outgroup attitudes became more positive after HL attendance, unlike merely participating in the event or not attending HL, actual contact (‘Reading a Book’), in particular, improved attitudes toward the target groups. While supporting the overall benefits of HL methodology as a contact intervention, our study demonstrated that HL may be more effective on certain dimensions of attitudes. Practical implications and possible limitations of HL, as well as perspectives for future research were discussed.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Notes

1 HL at Sabanci University has been also organized in previous years, but the number of participants did not allow a comprehensive analysis. Parts of the findings from HL 2013 and 2014 were included in a conference paper by Blazhenkova and Aydın (2014).

2 We also had high participation in the session of Transexual sex worker, however because this Book involved two categories, one being sexual orientation, the other being an unusual job, we did not include the analysis for this ‘Book’. Our findings replicated those of the ‘Transexual Book’, showing interactions between Time and Contact and demonstrating an increase in positive attitudes only among the participants who engaged in contact with this person.

3 We could not use data for outgroup knowledge, because the pretest measures mistakenly did not include the knowledge item, which made it impossible to match pre and posttests.

4 A check of previous attendance (Previously attended vs. Did not previously attend) as a further variable did not reveal any further interactions.

5 We also had a high participation to the ‘Schizofrenic Book’, however the majority of the meetings with this person was held at the end of the day where almost 200 participants joined the session, which may not satisfy the requirements of the close-intimate intergroup contact sessions.