Including Both Voices: A New Bidirectional Framework for Understanding and Improving Intergroup Relations

Abstract

Methods: If successful intergroup harmony is to be achieved between two groups, then both groups' voices must be heard. Despite this, 60 years of social psychological “intergroup” prejudice research has tended to adopt a solely majority‐centric perspective, with the majority group portrayed as the active agent of prejudice, and the minority group as passive targets.

Objective: This paper critically reviews relevant literature, highlighting this unidirectional imbalance, and proposes a new, two‐stage bidirectional framework, where we encourage researchers and educators to first understand how minority and majority groups' intergroup attitudes and emotions impact intergroup dynamics, before tailoring and implementing contact and recategorisation strategies to improve intergroup relations, nationally and internationally.

Conclusion: We argue that the interactive nature of the intergroup dynamic needs to be better understood, and each group's voice heard, before prejudice can be effectively reduced. Lastly, we describe an Australian study, the Dual Identity and Electronic‐contact (DIEC) programme, that has been conducted and has successfully applied this bidirectional framework.

Key words:

• cognitive recategorisation
• contact
• intergroup relations
• minority and majority attitudes
• prejudice reduction

The work was carried out in the School of Psychology at The University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.

The work was carried out in the School of Psychology at The University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.

Acknowledgement

We would like to sincerely thank Associate Professor Pauline Howie for reading and commenting on a draft version of this manuscript. We are immensely grateful for her insightful input.

Notes

The work was carried out in the School of Psychology at The University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.

1. The terms minority and majority groups are the terms used within the intergroup relations and social psychology literatures, and thus are appropriate in this review paper for consistency sake, and for keyword searches and citations. Additionally, although this review paper and proposed framework highlights majority and minority intergroup relationships, we acknowledge that tensions can also involve minority versus minority and/or majority versus majority groups. Our bidirectional framework can also be extended to these varying contexts.