Page 360 - The Social Animal

342 The Social Animal

but first, let us put a little more meat on those theoretical bones. How
might the process of dissonance reduction take place?
Turn the clock back to the late 1950s. Imagine a 45-year-old
white male whose 16-year-old daughter attends a segregated school.
Let us assume he has a negative attitude toward blacks, based in part
on his belief that blacks are shiftless and lazy and that all black males
are oversexed and potential rapists. Suddenly, the edict is handed
down by the Justice Department: The following autumn, his fair-
haired young daughter must go to an integrated school. State and
local officials, while perhaps not liking the idea, clearly convey the
fact that nothing can be done to prevent it; it’s the law of the land,
and it must be obeyed. The father might, of course, refuse to allow
his child to obtain an education or he could send her to an expensive
private school, but such measures are either terribly drastic or terri-
bly costly. So, he decides he must send her to an integrated school.
His cognition that his fair-haired young daughter must inevitably at-
tend the same school with blacks is dissonant with his cognition that
blacks are shiftless rapists. What does he do? My guess is that he will
begin to reexamine his beliefs about blacks. Are they really all that
shiftless? Do they really go around raping people? He may take an-
other look—this time, with a strong inclination to look for the good
qualities in blacks rather than to concoct and exaggerate bad, unac-
ceptable qualities. I would guess that, by the time September rolls
around, his attitude toward blacks would have become unfrozen and
would have shifted in a positive direction. If this shift can be bol-
stered by positive events after desegregation—for example, if his
daughter has pleasant and peaceful interactions with her black
schoolmates—a major change in the father’s attitudes is likely to re-
sult. Again, this analysis is admittedly oversimplified. But the basic
process holds. And look at the advantages this process has over an
information campaign. A mechanism has been triggered that moti-
vated the father to alter his negative stereotype of blacks.
My analysis strongly suggests that a particular kind of public
policy would be potentially most beneficial to society—a policy ex-
actly the opposite of what has been generally recommended. Follow-
ing the 1954 Supreme Court decision, there was a general feeling
that integration must proceed slowly, and that it must follow a cog-
nitive change of mind and heart. Most public officials and many so-
cial scientists believed that, to achieve harmonious racial relations,