This story is mind-spinning. New research shows that entrenched opinions against transgender people can be changed by a ten minute empathetic conversation. Also, this research was done by the same scientists who debunked a previous, bogus study on same-sex-marriage that reported a similar conclusion. Got that? Here’s how it all played out.
An earlier study claiming that door-to-door canvassing by a gay person actually can change people’s minds on same-sex marriage was exposed last year as a sham that used faked data. The same political scientists responsible for the exposé went ahead and did similar research based on attitudes towards transgender people and collected real data. Result? The fraudulent study’s conclusion was proven true. And it doesn’t matter if the interviewer is gay or not, opinion change apparently comes as a result of creating an empathetic understanding.
The now-retracted study’s finding surprised psychologists and political scientists in 2014 when it was published in Science: When contact changes minds: An experiment on transmission of support for gay equality by Michael J. LaCour and Donald P. Green. Although LaCour was a graduate student, Green is a respected social scientist and his name on the research added validity.
LaCour and Green demonstrate that simply a 20-minute conversation with a gay canvasser produced a large and sustained shift in attitudes toward same-sex marriage for Los Angeles County residents. Surveys showed persistent change up to 9 months after the initial conversation. Indeed, the magnitude of the shift for the person who answered the door was as large as the difference between attitudes in Georgia and Massachusetts.
The findings were so surprising because the established view in social science was that entrenched opinions aren’t amenable to change. The prevailing view was that canvassing for voting, for example, is best done to encourage people to vote, not how to vote. Another political science graduate student, David Broockman along with fellow student Joshua Kalla began looking into the 2014 study’s details. They discovered that the time and personnel required to actually produce the data cited in the bogus study was unrealistic.
Broockman and Kalla finally brought awareness to the faked study and attempted to discuss it online in political science forums. This was considered a career-breaking move because grad students don’t criticize the work of an established professional such as Green.
Broockman was motivated to look into the bogus study not just by the startling conclusion that defied the standard line, but also because he and Kalla were weeks away from beginning a similar study in Miami Florida. They contacted Green, their mentor and former professor, who looked into the published study and retracted it, saying that the data did not exist. Professors who have oversight of a graduate student’s research usually are cited as one of the authors, whether they actually worked directly on the research or not.
Broockman and Kalla just published the new study, Durably reducing transphobia: A field experiment on door-to-door canvassing, and reported this conclusion.
...a single approximately 10-minute conversation encouraging actively taking the perspective of others can markedly reduce prejudice for at least 3 months.
The story was reported by Science in For real this time: Talking to people about gay and transgender issues can change their prejudices.
[The researchers] sent 56 canvassers—some transgender, others not—to knock on the doors of 501 people living in Miami. As a control, some of the interviews focused not on transgender discrimination, but on recycling. In all cases, the 10-minute interview included a survey before and after to measure people’s attitudes regarding transgender people, as well as follow-ups ranging up to 3 months later.
The effect was as powerful as LaCour’s supposed results: The canvassing technique virtually erased the transgender prejudices of about one in 10 people, and the change lasted at least 3 months. However, Broockman and Kalla found that the interviews reduced prejudice regardless of the gender status of the canvasser, in contrast to the retracted study, which suggested that the interviewer had to be a representative of the victimized population for the change to stick.
Both the debunked and the valid studies were intended to evaluate a means of changing people’s minds developed by the Los Angeles Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Center in California who have worked to influence public perceptions of LGBT people.
[The Center has conducted] more than 13,000 face-to-face interviews over its nearly 50-year history. “Prejudice against transgender and gender-nonconforming people is a terrible daily reality,” says the center’s director, David Fleischer. So the canvassers aim not just to survey existing prejudices or spread awareness, but to permanently change people’s minds.
The implications of validating that face-to-face conversations can change people’s minds have significance beyond LGBT issues. It opens the door to canvassing in support of policies and shifting prejudices. It’s especially powerful because the new study showed that the interviewer doesn’t need to be one of the perceived victims or directly involved, but can influence opinions by sympathetically representing the issue and connecting it to a similar situation in the interviewee’s experiences.