Fearing refugees less after becoming more tolerant of a local minority: Transfer effects of an online intervention

We evaluated the effect of an intervention that targeted anti-Roma sentiment on attitudes towards refugees in Hungary using an online role-playing game. The evaluation was a randomized experiment with young adult participants playing a role-playing game facilitating perspective-taking, with the control group playing an unrelated placebo game. This paper evaluates the effect one year after the intervention and finds a substantial effect of 0.3 standard deviation reduction of prejudice against refugees. This result shows that interventions targeting prejudice against one minority may have transfer effects and reduce prejudice for another minority. Transfer effects may help design perspective-taking interventions targeting prejudice against minorities whose experience many people find difficult to empathize with.