Music behind bars: Observing musical abilities of people in prison improves social attitudes towards them

<p>Intergroup contact is often effective at reducing prejudice; however, it is less effective for groups that people find threatening (e.g. people in prison). We test whether a novel form of parasocial contact, a brief video demonstrating the musicality of a person experiencing incarceration, reduces negative attitudes towards incarcerated people. Participants from across the U.S. (N=720) made social judgments about people in prison before and after watching a real video of an incarcerated person (&amp;lt;2 minutes; from documentary 16 Bars). Across randomly-assigned conditions, we manipulated whether matched-length videos demonstrated musicality, or overt prosocial behavior without music. Pre-intervention attitudes towards people in prison were more negative than other comparison groups (immigrants, people experiencing homelessness). Videos depicting musicality significantly increased feelings of warmth, reduced blatant dehumanization, and improved judgments about the beauty, goodness, pleasantness, honesty, and niceness of people in prison. These videos were as effective at improving social attitudes as videos that showed overtly prosocial behavior. Brief video interventions showing others’ musicality hold promise as a tool to change attitudes and behavior toward marginalized people at a large scale, with applications for policy, education, and the value of music in the public sphere.</p>