The Use of Multiculturalism and Colorblindness to Promote Social Tolerance Among College Students. Abstract Social scientists have been investigating ways to maintain a degree of harmony and coexistence among different ethnic groups in a diverse society.  One strategy has been to focus on the ability of lay theories, or core beliefs, to promote social tolerance—the Multicultural and Colorblind perspectives. They are similar in their attempt to reach social harmony among groups from different cultural backgrounds. However, the Multicultural perspective approaches social tolerance by emphasizing the celebration of differences among various ethnical groups. The Colorblind perspective, on the other hand, promotes social tolerance by recognizing every person as unique and how they should be treated as so. Previous investigations by Wolsko et al. (2000) revealed limitations in the ability of the Multicultural perspective to promote social tolerance; however, there are concerns directed to the subject sample used for the study. The following study explores the ability of these perspectives to promote social tolerance in a diverse student population and after being exposed to facial features. The method used for the study was the social survey method. 99 students from New York Institute of Technology and 207 students from LaGuardia Community College (n=306) were recruited in the social survey study and were exposed to either one of two experimental conditions (e.g. Multicultural or ColorBlind), or the Control condition. Similar to previous findings, it is expected that a higher number of participants will show more social tolerance when inducted by either the Multicultural or the Colorblind perspective than when inducted by the control condition. Additionally, it is expected that such findings will be enhanced after exposure to the physical features of the face. Such findings will shed light as to the limitations and advantages associated with the use of the Multicultural and Colorblind perspectives. Such findings will also be important in being able to more successfully implement policies and laws in different levels and sectors of society that will lead to more harmonious relationships. References Aboud, F.E. (1988). Children and prejudice. New York: Blackwell. Apfelbaum, E. P., Sommers, S. R., & Norton, M. I. (2008). Seeing Race and Seeming Racist? Evaluating Strategic Colorblindness in Social Interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 918-932. Esses, V.M. & Dovidio, J.F. (2002). The role of emotions in determining willingness to engage in intergroup contact. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1202-1214. Karafantis, K., Pierre-Louis, J., Lewandowski, G. (2007, March). 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Major Approaches to the Measurement of Acculturation Among Ethnic Minority Populations: A Content Analysis and an Alternative Empirical Strategy. In K. Chun, P. Organista, G. Marin (Eds.), Acculturation: Advances in Theory, Measurement, and Applied Research (pp. 39-60). Washington DC: American Psychological Association.   Back to Top