Following news of the assassination, the children had run in to class with confused queries regarding the murder of Martin Luther King, whom they had previously named as their ‘hero of the month’. They could not comprehend why someone would murder a ‘king’. Jane Elliott sat them down and asked what they knew about ‘Negroes’. Due to being from a small rural white Christian populated area and with little previous knowledge of black people, their responses were sure to be influenced by their relatives, friends, media and the education system. It was noted that the children regarded black people to be inferior, for example, they believed that they were not as smart as white people and were less civilised. This representation which the children had voiced with no hate but just of common agreement appalled Jane. She proceeded to ask their definition of the key words “prejudice”, “discrimination”, “race” and “inferior”. These they had previously studied, and demonstrated some concept of their meaning. The teacher asked how they would feel if they were to imagine that they were a black child. This led to a feeling of sympathy towards children of a different race. Rather than be satisfied that the children felt empathy for these other children and to stop there, she decided to take the lesson further. Jane Elliott wanted to try and leave such an impact on these children that they would later in life not display prejudice or discrimination towards others. With the class approval she divided the pupils by eye colour. She told the children with brown eyes that they were inferior to those with blue eyes, and as such could not expect the same treatment or reward. For example, blue-eyed children were allowed a longer break and to queue first for lunch. The other children were made to wear collars so they could be easily identified and they were not allowed to integrate with their fellow peers. The teacher while treating the blue-eyed ones with positive regard, constantly criticised and belittled the brown-eyed group. Rapidly she saw the children switch from sweet, kind children to ones demonstrating hostility, derogation and even violent behaviour towards others just because they had different coloured eyes. On the second day she told them that she had lied and it was in fact the blue-eyed children that were inferior to the brown eyed ones. Within minutes the situation and treatments experienced had reversed. To understand the behaviour of the children, there is a need to explore examples of prejudice which could have influenced their behaviour. One explanation of this could be personality conflict explanations. The authoritarian personality displayed when the children were asked what they knew about black people, showed they held no unbiased information and only repeated their parent’s negative opinions as their own. Another explanation of authoritarian personality explains that children who live with elders that are very rigid in their views grow up to experience and demonstrate the same intolerance that their parents have accepted as the social norm. A consequence of this means they may have experienced a harsh upbringing leading to a need for retaliation, but when these feelings cannot be expressed, they are repressed until the opportunity arises that they may vent these festered emotions. An example of this is when the children in Mrs Elliott’s class were given an opportunity to display their hostility; resulting in a displacement of the feelings they felt towards their teacher for making them experience discrimination. Instead they were able to release any pent up aggression and frustration on the other children and to treat them as a scapegoat. This is also an example of the frustration- aggression hypothesis as founded by Dollard who suggests that prejudice, people inflict on others often resulting in aggression is influenced by people’s need to release frustration. Throughout the exercise there are also examples of social conflict explanations. Seen when the children relate to the other children with the same coloured eyes and as such commonly treat the other group with disdain. Social identity theory is believed to be a leading influence and claims that our personality is shaped by two differing factors, Personal Identity and characteristics and social identity, which is when an individual develops a sense of belonging, in particular to a specific group. This helps us to develop self-esteem and results in positive self identity. Being a teacher means that Jane Elliot has a strong sense of personal identity and can easily influence her impressionable class as demonstrated by the children’s complete and undoubted belief in what their teacher is informing them to be the truth, though is commonly known among adults as false. Due to the success of her experiment she further developed the blue eyes/ brown eyes exercise and went on to use this and other exercises in training workshops with adults so they would experience discrimination and therefore feel empathy towards people they perceived as different, be it caused by their age, sex, race, creed or sexuality.
When looking at the possible explanations for the prejudice the children demonstrated in class. It is obvious to an extent that personality conflict and social conflict explanations and social identity theory all play a role in determining the reason behind why the children reacted in a hostile manner. However while prejudice and discrimination is definitely a contributory factor and can fuel aggression leading to violence and misconduct. They are not necessarily the only factors.
Reference:
Connelly, B. (2008) Social Psychology – Prejudice and Discrimination
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