It’s so much deeper than that. For a lot of these *phobias, the concept of being friends with such a person is so foreign that merely reading a story about inter-group friendship has a measurable positive impact. See the below excerpt.
- Cernat, V. (2011). Extended Contact Effects: Is Exposure to Positive Outgroup Exemplars Sufficient or Is Interaction With Ingroup Members Necessary?. Journal Of Social Psychology, 151(6), 737-753. doi:10.1080/00224545.2010.522622
Participants who read a story about the friendship between a member of a stigmatized group and the member of another outgroup scored higher on outgroup admiration than a control group and felt less threatened by the prospect of interacting with a member of the target outgroup. However, reduction of outgroup disgust, negative stereotypes, biased beliefs, and anxiety was or tended to be highest among participants who read a story about the friendship between a member of a stigmatized group and an ingroup member. (p. 747)
Basically, it’s like these people have never imagined the target of their bias as someone who you COULD be friends with.
This is why they rail against college education so hard: because a collegiate education often requires you to study things like this, which in turn opens your mind to differing ideas. Which they screech about as “That liberal indoctrination stole my child from me!”
Not to mention in college you’re thrown in with thousands of people of all races, sexes, religions, and culture’s, and you are bound to be exposed to new ways of thinking. If you stay in your home town of 5000 people you never have to be exposed to other ways of thinking.
I’ve heard many formerly conservative peeps say something like that: Nobody indoctrinated me, I just met the people who were supposed to be othered and it turns out they are cool.
For the record: Same at schools - nobody is saying you gotta be gay or trans, but apparently just telling kids that different people exist is a threat to their indoctrinated lifestyle.
