Race and education
Jim Burke
When Janet Schofield, PhD, a social psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh,
entered college in Boston in the mid-1960s,
the public schools there were just beginning to
desegregate. Protesters stoned school buses and
took to the streets. The experience sparked an
interest in intergroup relations that endures today.
“This whole issue of how people from different
racial or ethnic backgrounds get along is a core
issue in terms of societal peace, conflict and
justice,” Schofield says.
Her research explores the factors that influence
relationships among people from different racial
and ethnic groups. Much of this work focuses
on the ways that school structures and policies
affect relationships between white and African-American students. In a study that dates to 1980,
she and her colleagues examined whether an
ambiguously aggressive action — for example,
one student bumping into another in a crowded
hallway — would be viewed differently depending
on the students’ race. Schofield and graduate
student Andrew Sagar found that when the person
doing the bumping was African-American, the
participants saw the action as meaner and more
threatening than when the bumper was white. The
research was published in the Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, and “Dateline” featured the
results in a special on race relations.
Follow-up research suggests a similar bias
exists outside school hallways, Schofield says. For
example, more recent studies have found that
both college students and police officers are more
likely to perceive an ambiguous object as a weapon
if the person holding it is African-American
rather than white. In a 2010 longitudinal study,
Schofield examined whether white and African-American college freshmen who had roommates
from the other group were more likely to develop
friendships with people from different racial backgrounds than
freshman paired with someone of their own race. She and her
colleagues found that they were more likely to do so, and that
contact between the two groups during freshman year predicted
the development of those friendships by the end of that year.
Previous studies have found that friendships between group
Research by Dr. Janet Schofield found that white college freshmen who are
assigned black roommates develop long-lasting friendships that cross racial
divides, and vice versa.
members reduce prejudice.
Schofield doesn’t just present her work at conferences, she
brings it to policymakers. In 1998, she led a daylong seminar for
members of Congress on improving intergroup relations, and
her research has been cited by two Supreme Court justices in a
case involving race and schooling. “It’s very important that the
work become part of the public discourse,” she says. n
50
MONITOR ON PSYCHOLOGY • JULY/AUGUST 2012
