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How to Change Attitudes Toward LGBT People

BY Bob Roehr

A directed conversation as short as 10 minutes can change attitudes about transgender people and increase support for nondiscrimination legislation, according to a new study prominently published April 7 in the influential journal Science. The techniques likely are also applicable to addressing homophobia.
The approach is called "deep canvassing" and involves going door-to-door talking with voters about discrimination. Rather than talk at a voter, the focus is on engaging the voter to talk about their personal experience with discrimination, and then see how it relates to discrimination against others.
"The single most powerful thing we do is when we get the voter to remember and then speak aloud their real life experience that is relevant to the issue we are talking about," says Dave Fleischer. He played a leading role in developing the approach as director of the Los Angeles LGBT Center Leadership LAB.
"Part of the value is that the voter sees for themselves a connection between whatever experience they have had with people judging them, or being prejudiced against them or a loved one, and the kind of judgment, unkindness and prejudice that transgender people face."
The effort began in the wake of the heart-breaking passage of California Prop 8, which banned same-sex marriage in that state. The loss was particularly shocking because polls had shown the pro-gay side ahead. Fleischer says that after the results came in, "We knew we didn't understand well enough what was on the minds of these voters."
An initial evaluation of the approach to address homophobia, by UCLA graduate student Michael LaCour and Columbia University political science professor Donald Green, made a big splash when it was published in Science in December 2014.
The LA Center subsequently engaged then University of California Berkeley graduate students David Broockman and Joshua Kalla to evaluate applying the approach to issues of transgender discrimination, in South Florida. While preparing for that study it became clear to the researchers that LaCour had completely fabricated much if not all of the data he used. Green was appalled and promptly withdrew the paper.
The Miami study used an online survey to create broad baseline profiles of voters willing to participate in that activity for small compensation such as a gift card. It chose a cross section of voters in conservative neighborhoods that earlier had voted against gay rights legislation. Then volunteer canvassers were sent to knock on doors and talk with specific people, not informing them of how they were selected. Attitudes were reevaluated through online surveys at several points after the face-to-face discussion.
"The canvasser does very little talking, just like a therapist, only with a voter," says Broockman, now an assistant professor of political economy at Stanford University. He calls the interaction "a kind of theoretical cousin to cognitive behavioral therapy" in psychology.
While individual voter's views changed in various degrees and directions, overall the simple 10 to 15-minute conversation had a significant effect on total voter attitudes towards transgender people and their willingness to support nondiscrimination legislation. Broockman says it is similar to the extent that America's views of gays changed between 1998 and 2012.
As part of a follow up online survey some weeks later, the voters were shown a transphobic video used by opponents in a Houston campaign. It had some effect on people who did not have a face-to-face conversation with a canvasser but barely dented attitudes of those who had that conversation.
Ironically, the very public transition of Bruce to Caitlyn Jenner played out in the media a month before the canvassing began, but Broockman says it appears to have had little effect. "Anecdotally, I don't think that one person in our study mentioned her in their comments and very, very rarely was it ever brought up. Most Americans do not have a media diet that gays and lesbians do."

Why It Works

Kenneth Sherrill, the guru of gay political science and emeritus professor at Hunter College in New York, was impressed by the methodology used in the study and particularly by the durability of the change in attitudes. It suggests to him, "If you talk to people face-to-face in their home, you change their opinion more than you do in other ways."
The LGBT community has long been told of the importance of coming out and telling their stories. When people hear and understand the discrimination they will empathize and their attitudes will change.
Fleischer believes this type of playing the victim card "is not enough, and it may not even be meaningful. I think what happens when we tell our stories, especially about something with emotional significance for us, coming out, our experiencing prejudice, we make ourselves vulnerable. What that communicates to the voter really powerfully is, whatever story they are going to tell us, we are not going to judge them."
That vulnerability and openness, combined with listening, makes a real conversation possible. He says, "That is why so many of the voters remember and share with us these emotional, powerful stories of their own experience. It is reflecting back on that voters realize that they would prefer to judge less and be judged less, and to support more." And it helps to explain why the change in attitude lasts.
Fleischer acknowledges that deep canvassing is a slow process to implement, not like a last minute television ad blitz. He believes it is something the LGBT community should be doing on a regular basis, much like exercise in one's everyday life, to incrementally change the social and political environment.
The end goal should not be simply a piece of legislation or ballot measure that extends or withdraws certain legal protections; it should be a change in attitude that makes such protections superfluous or unnecessary.
"Our real goal should be to reduce the prejudice against us, so as we go about living our lives, it's not a big deal if we are in a restaurant and hold the hand of our partner. And when somebody presumes we are gay, that doesn't mean that they might treat us less well," says Fleischer. "If that is the goal, then this (approach) is extraordinarily valuable."

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