Findings suggest that when we think about other ethnic groups in theabstract, the resulting attitudes may be very different from thefeelings we actually experience during (actual) interactions with members ofthose groups.
Volunteers were shown a brief segment of a documentary detailing the hardships endured by members of a minority group and were instructed to view it with an objective or an empathetic mindset. The volunteers expected to discuss the video with another study participant, who was either from the same ethnic group as they were or from the minority group depicted in the documentary. The partners never actually met; instead they had controlled interactions in which written personal information was exchanged (in reality, only the researchers read the written responses).The results, described in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveal that empathy for minority groups has a much less positive effect when it is triggered in the context of an actual intergroup interaction situation than it does when directed toward minority group members in the abstract. The researchers found that the volunteers who had viewed the video with empathy and were told they were paired with a participant from a minority group reported more negative feelings towards minority group members, including greater feelings of prejudice. However, the empathetic volunteers who had been paired up with participants from their own ethnic group reported a more positive attitude towards minority group members.
[…]