Imagine All The Synchrony: The effects of actual and imagined synchronous walking on attitudes towards marginalised groups

Abstract

Stereotyping is a pervasive societal problem that impacts not only minority groups but subserves individuals who perpetuate stereotypes, leading to greater distance between groups. Social contact interventions have been shown to reduce prejudice and stereotyping, but optimal contact conditions between groups are often out of reach in day to day life. Therefore, we investigated the effects of a synchronous walking intervention, a non-verbal embodied approach to intergroup contact that may reduce the need for optimal contact conditions. We studied attitude change towards the Roma group in Hungary following actual and imagined walking, both in a coordinated and uncoordinated manner. Results showed that coordinated walking, both imagined and in vivo, led to explicit and implicit reductions in prejudice and stereotyping towards both the Roma individual and the wider Roma social group. This suggests that coordinated movement could be a valuable addition to current approaches towards prejudice reduction.

Walking in My Shoes: Imagined Synchrony Improves Attitudes Towards Out-groups

“…These findings show that increases in empathy and positive attitudes only occurred after participants imagined coordinating with out-group but not in-group members. The findings reported here therefore replicate those of Atherton et al (2019) in a new context, showing that imagined coordination can be utilized to foster better attitudes towards members of disenfranchised groups. Furthermore, they highlight that this effect is modulated by group membership, further supporting the idea that coordination doesn't unilaterally increase pro-social behaviours, but differentially changes perceptions of in-group and out-group members.…”

“…Similarly, imagining being in a crowd reduces people's helping behaviour on a subsequent task, in line with the bystander effect (Garcia, Weaver, Moskowitz, & Darley, 2002). Previous work has also shown that not only are people able to successfully perform imagined coordinated actions (Vesper, Knoblich, & Sebanz, 2014), but that doing so leads to similar increases in pro-social attitudes that are shown to follow actual coordination (Cross et al, 2017;Atherton et al, 2019). Some speculate that coordination may have long been used as a tool to foster a common group mentality amongst co-actors (McNeil, 1995).…”

“…Even imagining coordinating has been shown to lead to some of the same social consequences as actually coordinating (i.e. Dong, Dai, & Wyer, 2015;Cross, Atherton, Wilson, & Golonka, 2017;Atherton, Sebanz, & Cross, 2019).…”

“…members of different universities). The only work to explore the role of coordination in intergroup relations towards a disenfranchised out-group examined changes in Hungarian's attitudes towards the Roma (Atherton et al, 2019), an ethnic minority group which is particularly marginalized throughout Central Europe (Kende, 2000). This work showed that both actual and imagined synchronous walking led to significant changes in attitudes towards a socio-culturally significant out-group.…”

Expectancy effects threaten the inferential validity of synchrony-prosociality research

“…expectation/ demand effects; and effects of having viewed different videos across conditions of people walking either in synchrony or asynchrony; Atherton et al, 2019;Stupacher et al, 2017). To isolate expectations from any effect of first-person mental simulation, we asked participants to make predictions about other people, not themselves; we avoided including images, videos, or unnecessary details that could prompt vivid imagery; we kept vignettes brief; and we did not ask participants to spend additional time elaborating on vivid mental imagery after reading (as done in Atherton et al, 2019).…”