Correcting Misperceptions about Ethnic Discrimination

Correcting Misperceptions about Ethnic Discrimination

The Limits of Awareness Raising to Promote Support for Equal Treatment Policies
Merlin Schaeffer, CRIS Seminar, 7th April 2023
  • Image Contimis Works (via Shutterstock)Image Contimis Works (via Shutterstock)

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2022-2023

Friday, April 7th 2023, 11:30 am
Sciences Po (1, place Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin) - Room K008

Correcting Misperceptions about Ethnic Discrimination:
The Limits of Awareness Raising to Promote Support for Equal Treatment Policies

Merlin Schaeffer

Professor, Dpt. of Sociology, University of Copenhagen

Merlin SchaefferTo what extent are mainstream citizens aware of ethnic discrimination in their society, and can awareness-raising initiatives increase recognition of this issue and garner support from citizens for equal treatment policies?

Using a survey experiment among a representative sample of 4,800 mainstream Danes, we elicited mis-perceptions of the extent of discrimination that Muslims face in access to work, housing, education, and political representatives. We then tested whether informing citizens about the results of field-experimental correspondence studies increases their recognition of the issue and support for equal treatment policies.

The study advances over prior information treatment designs, by testing the importance of three ideal-types of framing, based on the assumption that citizens require framing that helps them comprehend the significance of social science evidence.
The three ideal-types of framing tested were: an independent scientist framing the evidence as credible, a lawyer framing the evidence as a breach of the law, or a potentially affected minority framing the evidence as causing them grief.
Moreover, the experiment utilizes two control groups to disentangle the effects of priming respondents on the topic under investigation from the effects of the correction and its framing.

The results indicate that most citizens are aware of the discrimination that minorities face and even tend to over-perceive its extent. Furthermore, communicating correspondence study results corrects and converges perceptions about the extent of ethnic discrimination but does not change recognition of the problem or support for equal treatment policies - regardless of whether framed by researchers, lawyers, potentially affected persons, or not framed at all.
The mere priming of the topic of discrimination also has no effect, apart from increasing donations to minority support groups.

In conclusion, these findings suggests that awareness-raising initiatives are unlikely to be successful in promoting support for policies that promote equal treatment. We conclude by discussing that lack of support for such policies is likely driven by other factors, such as concerns that they may infringe on mainstream privileges.

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