Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment - Lucrative Market

[Jean-Marc Perreault]

Greetings everyone,
I was speaking with a colleague recently who mentioned she
had attended a workshop given by Jane Elliott (made famous through her
ingenuous blue eyes brown eyes experiment). She said (my colleague) the
workshop was aimed at making "white people" understand what it is like to be
the victim of racism. Within a few hours only, these individuals are
apparently brought to experience discrimination, and made aware of their own
biases. Basically, Mrs. Elliott uses the same type of setting as in her
initial experiment. She classifies individuals by eye colour, and has the
main group (brown eyes) discriminate against the blue eyes (or something
like that). It gets quite intense, and this brings people to some form of
insight about racism and hidden biases.

My colleague also mentioned she was thinking of attending a "train the
trainers" workshop to be able to lead such workshops herself. This triggered
my curiosity, and so I contacted Jane Elliott to inquire about such courses.
She kindly replied that she was going to offer one this coming summer, and
that for the 10-day course, the fee was 10,000$ US. Ouch! I did not expect
such a fee!

I may have considered such a workshop, if only for the sake of meeting Mrs
Elliott and making my own impression about such a way of leading workshops.
I have my own reservations with regards to the ethics of putting the groups
through such intense pressure. But for 10,000$, well, what can I say other
that I am unlikely to ever meet her in such a context!

My question to you all is whether you are aware of any research that may
have been done on the efficacy of such an approach to change attitudes,
especially with regards to racism. If such an approach has been demonstrated
to be efficacious, (and ethical) then it may be worth the cost. But if it is
not backed by any solid evidence, well... I am interested because up here in
the North, we have a lot of systemic racism going on. It would be nice to
have something that is both easy to market, and worth everybody's time.

So let loose on your keyboards and let me know your thoughts. I've always
liked the basic Blue eyes brown eyes experiment. I now need to look at it
more closely.

Cheers all!

Jean-Marc






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[Scott Lilienfeld]

Jean: See:

Stewart, T. L., La Duke, J. R., Bracht, C., Sweet, B. A. M., & Gamarel, K.
E. (2003). Do the "eyes" have it? A program evaluation of Jane Elliott's
"blue eyes/brown eyes" diversity training exercise. Journal of Applied
Social Psychology, 33, 1898-1921.
To my knowledge, this is about the only (admittedly preliminary)
research to examine the efficacy of this exercise. ....Scott



----- Original Message -----
From: "Jean-Marc Perreault" <***@northwestel.net>
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences" <***@acsun.frostburg.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2006 12:26 AM
Subject: Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment - Lucrative Market

Post by Jean-Marc Perreault
Greetings everyone,
I was speaking with a colleague recently who mentioned
she
had attended a workshop given by Jane Elliott (made famous through her
ingenuous blue eyes brown eyes experiment). She said (my colleague) the
workshop was aimed at making "white people" understand what it is like to
be
the victim of racism. Within a few hours only, these individuals are
apparently brought to experience discrimination, and made aware of their
own
biases. Basically, Mrs. Elliott uses the same type of setting as in her
initial experiment. She classifies individuals by eye colour, and has the
main group (brown eyes) discriminate against the blue eyes (or something
like that). It gets quite intense, and this brings people to some form of
insight about racism and hidden biases.
My colleague also mentioned she was thinking of attending a "train the
trainers" workshop to be able to lead such workshops herself. This
triggered
my curiosity, and so I contacted Jane Elliott to inquire about such
courses.
She kindly replied that she was going to offer one this coming summer, and
that for the 10-day course, the fee was 10,000$ US. Ouch! I did not expect
such a fee!
I may have considered such a workshop, if only for the sake of meeting Mrs
Elliott and making my own impression about such a way of leading
workshops.
I have my own reservations with regards to the ethics of putting the
groups
through such intense pressure. But for 10,000$, well, what can I say other
that I am unlikely to ever meet her in such a context!
My question to you all is whether you are aware of any research that may
have been done on the efficacy of such an approach to change attitudes,
especially with regards to racism. If such an approach has been
demonstrated
to be efficacious, (and ethical) then it may be worth the cost. But if it
is
not backed by any solid evidence, well... I am interested because up here
in
the North, we have a lot of systemic racism going on. It would be nice to
have something that is both easy to market, and worth everybody's time.
So let loose on your keyboards and let me know your thoughts. I've always
liked the basic Blue eyes brown eyes experiment. I now need to look at it
more closely.
Cheers all!
Jean-Marc
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[David L Gent]

Hi
It's not a direct answer but you will be interested in the BBC Radio 4
programme "The Business of Race". Programme 2 of a pair. The BBC run a
Listen Again scheme, but it only stays online for a week so jump in
quickly if you want to hear it. Links:

BBC - Business of Race website with a link to the Listen Again facility:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/thebusinessofrace/pip/uv1ad/

BBC news article based on the programme with listeners' comments:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4521244.stm

In this programme the presenter attends on of Jane Elliot's training
sessions and is allowed to play extracts from an earlier session. She
specifically comments on similarities between what she saw and the
extracts chosen. She was not allowed to interview Jane herself (no
explanation) but did interview someone else - in charge of the UK
operation I think.

Personally I found it both interesting and shocking stepping, in my
opinion (I don't necessarily have data to back it up) well beyond what I
would find acceptable and making generalisations which I would find
unsupportable.

The programme quotes the only study that they were aware of on the
effectiveness of this kind of workshop - equivocal at best (actually I
think there was a negative effect, but I'm not sure of my memory there).
Presumably this is the study quoted by Scott. The person interviewed
simply refused to address questions on this.

I've always thought that Elliot's work - a demonstration rather than an
experiment? - was interesting and of value though there always were some
ethical questions. However the lesson we drew from it is that the
students very quickly exhibited prejudiced behaviour towards the outgroup
and that this remained true even when the in/out groups were swapped.
There seemed to be nothing of that in this report, these workshops purport
to give the white (but only blue-eyed white) people in the group the
experience of being subject to prejudice.

Finally - it's worth remembering that the experience of race relations and
of racism in the UK has been different from the experience in the UK and I
imagine that this is reflected in the tenor of the programme.

Finally - $10,000 - wow. How much do they anticipate making from the
courses they run once they've been trained? It's a different world.

Cheers
David

On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 05:00:23 -0000, Teaching in the Psychological Sciences

Post by Scott Lilienfeld
Subject: Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment - Lucrative Market
Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 21:26:40 -0800
X-Message-Number: 1
Greetings everyone,
I was speaking with a colleague recently who mentioned
she
had attended a workshop given by Jane Elliott (made famous through her
ingenuous blue eyes brown eyes experiment). She said (my colleague) the
workshop was aimed at making "white people" understand what it is like
to be
the victim of racism. Within a few hours only, these individuals are
apparently brought to experience discrimination, and made aware of their
own
biases. Basically, Mrs. Elliott uses the same type of setting as in her
initial experiment. She classifies individuals by eye colour, and has the
main group (brown eyes) discriminate against the blue eyes (or something
like that). It gets quite intense, and this brings people to some form of
insight about racism and hidden biases.
My colleague also mentioned she was thinking of attending a "train the
trainers" workshop to be able to lead such workshops herself. This
triggered
my curiosity, and so I contacted Jane Elliott to inquire about such
courses.
She kindly replied that she was going to offer one this coming summer,
and
that for the 10-day course, the fee was 10,000$ US. Ouch! I did not
expect
such a fee!
I may have considered such a workshop, if only for the sake of meeting
Mrs
Elliott and making my own impression about such a way of leading
workshops.
I have my own reservations with regards to the ethics of putting the
groups
through such intense pressure. But for 10,000$, well, what can I say
other
that I am unlikely to ever meet her in such a context!
My question to you all is whether you are aware of any research that may
have been done on the efficacy of such an approach to change attitudes,
especially with regards to racism. If such an approach has been
demonstrated
to be efficacious, (and ethical) then it may be worth the cost. But if
it is
not backed by any solid evidence, well... I am interested because up
here in
the North, we have a lot of systemic racism going on. It would be nice to
have something that is both easy to market, and worth everybody's time.
So let loose on your keyboards and let me know your thoughts. I've always
liked the basic Blue eyes brown eyes experiment. I now need to look at it
more closely.
Cheers all!
Jean-Marc
----------------------------------------------------------------------

<snip>

Post by Scott Lilienfeld
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment - Lucrative Market
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 08:36:41 -0500
X-Message-Number: 3
Stewart, T. L., La Duke, J. R., Bracht, C., Sweet, B. A. M., & Gamarel,
K.
E. (2003). Do the "eyes" have it? A program evaluation of Jane Elliott's
"blue eyes/brown eyes" diversity training exercise. Journal of Applied
Social Psychology, 33, 1898-1921.
To my knowledge, this is about the only (admittedly preliminary)
research to examine the efficacy of this exercise. ....Scott

--
David L Gent
South Birmingham College
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Sparkhill
Birmingham
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