EDUCATION AND UNDERSTANDING STRUCTURAL CAUSES FOR GROUP INEQUALITIES

Group inequalities in the United States are most often attributed to t he characteristics of the individuals who belong to these groups; thin king about structural causes of group inequalities is rare. This paper reviews cognitive, cultural, and systemic reasons for this bias. The efficacy of education as a way to increase structural thinking was inv estigated in two studies of college students' causal thinking about gr oup inequalities. Both studies involved a course on intergroup relatio ns that covered structural sources of racial or ethnic inequalities. R esults supported hypotheses that the course would increase structural thinking about racial or ethnic inequality, and that structural thinki ng would generalize to inequalities not explicitly covered in the cour se. Both course content and active learning pedagogy were related to s tructural thinking about inequalities. Active learning was also relate d to applying structural thinking to targets of change.