A simple intervention enduringly reduces anti-Muslim sentiment
Collective blame is when an entire group of people are blamed for the action of one individual belonging to that group. Currently, this is often the case with Muslims. This article describes a simple, 1-minute intervention that drastically reduced European participants’ collective blame of Muslims for terrorist attacks. Basically, the process involved participants reading over instances of European terrorists and noting to what extent they felt responsible themselves before reading stories of Muslim terrorists. The most encouraging aspect of this simple intervention is that the results held quite well even one year out.
Though it is sad that there is a need for this intervention, it is encouraging that it is so simple. I feel like this is even something that could be useful in the classroom. Even in situations where it is not exactly collective blame that is at play, it never hurts to build empathy!
