Mindful Gratitude as an Intervention to Reduce Ethnic Prejudice in Poland

Both in Poland and in Europe, the hostility towards people of different ethnicity has increased significantly in recent years, as Europe has been confronted with waves of immigrants and a rising amount of terrorist attacks. Despite long-term research on prejudice reduction, the most known method, the intergroup contact strategy has limitations of being effective mostly among people who are motivated to reduce prejudice.

Our project, which is a part of larger, cross-cultural research, examines whether ethnic bias can be reduced by a method used so far by clinical and health psychologists: mindfulness practice and gratitude practice. The objective of the present pilot study was to assess whether a short gratitude practice (writing grateful essay and grateful contemplation with mindfulness components) reduces ethnic prejudice. In addition, the study examined the role of two possible moderators: moral inclusiveness (Schwartz, 2007) and collective narcissism (Golec de Zavala et al., 2009). The study had a between subjects design with 4 groups of 60 people participating in different research conditions: gratitude practice and mindful gratitude practice, and two neutral practices. Implicit prejudice was assessed by the Implicit Association Test. Explicit prejudice was assessed by Bogardus Social Distance Scale (Bogardus, 1922).