The induction of doubt using metacognitive training to promote tolerance between political groups - Trial DRKS00029115

Timeline & Enrollment

Summary

Main purpose: The intervention refers to prejudices of conservatives towards LGBTIQ+ persons. In this intergroup conflict between conservatives and that group, which can also be seen as representatives of a postmodern, liberal society, mediation and hostility reduction is useful and necessary, as polarization (along the line liberal, postmodern vs. conservative, traditional, religious) is visible here. Should the intervention succeed, MKT could provide an approach to tolerance building among conservatives toward postmodern liberal LGBTIQ+ individuals. This study serves as a concepted replication of Reininger et al.'s (2020) study, in which MKT was already found to be an effective method for reducing liberals' prejudice toward conservatives. Background: advancing social polarization and extremization processes between liberals and conservatives pose a threat to the free democratic basic order and the open society (Popper, 1994). In particular, such processes are favored by increased prejudices and devaluations of the political opponent (Planck & Green, 2009). As shown in the example of Muslim subjects, the procedure of metacognitive training (MKT; Moritz et al., 2014) is an effective way to reduce prejudice towards a religious (and in the context presumably also political) outgroup compared to a pure information control condition (Education) (Moritz et al., 2018). The difference between MKT and Education is that in an MKT condition, overconfidence-generating questions (stereotype-congruent, but in reality surprisingly different from what the stereotypical assumption would suggest) are asked first, followed by corrective information, whereas during an Education condition, only that (corrective) information of the MKT condition is presented. What is done: The experimental design is a 3-group (MKT vs. Education vs. No Treatment) randomized controlled between-subjects design. The questions were developed using current political issues that could potentially divide the conservative group from the postmodern liberal LGBTIQ+ individuals. The independent variable (UV) is the type of intervention, which varies across three levels. The stages represent the Metacognitive Training, Education, and No-Treatment conditions. Potential study participants: residents of America who self-report as conservative. Aims and Hypotheses: H1: Metacognitive training will improve evaluation, reduce perceived threat and anidemocratic attitudes, and reduce stereotypes and negative feelings toward the political outgroup, postmodern liberal LGBTIQ+ individuals. H2: Metacognitive training improves evaluation, reduces perceived threat as well as anidemocratic attitudes, and reduces stereotypes and negative feelings toward the political outgroup, postmodern-liberal LGBTIQ+ persons, significantly more than simply presenting information about the political outgroup or no-treatment.

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