Intergroup Dialogue in Undergraduate Multicultural Psychology Education: Group Climate Development and Outcomes

We examined group climate and outcomes in 19 intergroup dialogues (IGD) focused on gender, race and ethnicity, religion and spirituality, sexual orientation, or social class at a large, public university in the Southeastern United States. Group members were undergraduate students enrolled in a course in multicultural psychology. Participants completed pre- and post-dialogue outcome measures of: attitudes toward diversity, colorblind attitudes, and ethnocultural empathy. Following each of the eight weekly sessions, participants completed a group climate measure assessing engagement, avoidance, and conflict. Across eight weeks, group members perceived significant increases in engagement and decreases in avoidance, but no significant changes in conflict. In addition, we found significant decreases in two aspects of colorblind racial attitudes: blindness to racial privilege (RP) and blindness to institutional discrimination (ID); and significant increases in empathic perspective taking (EPT). Finally, change in individual group members’ perceptions of the level of engagement over time predicted post-dialogue RP, ID, and EPT, when controlling for pre-dialogue scores on the same variables. These findings are discussed in relationship to the critical-dialogic model of IGD, and implications for research and practice are explored.