Social Tuning and Shared Reality: Downstream Consequences in Intergroup Attitudes and Relations

Abstract

In this dissertation, I first test the hypothesis that social tuning yields shared reality (Studies 1-3), and then I examine whether feeling as if one has shared reality with an ostensibly egalitarian partner influences behaviors in subsequent interracial interactions and/or produces lasting reductions in anti-Black prejudice over a weeklong delay (Studies 4 and 5). I show that social tuning does indeed predict a sense of shared reality. Further, sharing reality via tuning with an ostensibly egalitarian ingroup member improves the quality of an immediate, subsequent interracial interaction with a Black stranger. Results demonstrate that a social tuning intervention also produces implicit prejudice reduction that persists over a weeklong delay, and that treatment participants report more positive interracial encounters during the weeklong interim. Taken together, my dissertation results point to a promising intervention strategy to reduce implicit prejudice and improve intergroup interactions--all without requiring excessive effort on the individual's part and without placing any burden on the racial outgroup member.