Using Software to Increase Perspective Taking and Reduce Implicit Prejudice

Perspective taking has been shown to reduce implicit prejudice in previous research. Todd, Bodenhausen, Richeson, & Galinsky (2011) found that IAT scores were reduced after participants wrote stories about a typical day in the life of an African American, if they were told to take the perspective of the target person when writing the story. We partially replicated this finding. We also introduced a computer-based game designed to increase perspective-taking ability. Participants who played the game and were told to take the perspective of the target person when writing the story demonstrated less implicit prejudice than participants who wrote stories from an objective perspective or played a control game. These results bolster research on the power of perspective taking to reduce prejudice and demonstrate the efficacy of the perspective-taking training game