Some of the intercultural education training goals are related to educators’ perceptions and evaluative reactions toward minority groups of children.

Current stereotypes and prejudices have evolved into different forms that are very difficult to recognize and combat. Biased beliefs (stereotypes) and evaluations (prejudices) about social groups are pervasive, subtle, and complex, and this nature has become a challenge for intervention techniques that cannot only be based on rational mechanisms (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2008).

A lot of research about automaticity and control has been done from a social cognition approach –a perspective that has come to dominate the study of stereotypes (Bargh, 2007, Devine & Sharp, 2009; Dijksterhuis, 2010). Within this field, it has been shown that, by default, stereotypes and prejudices are activated in automatic ways, but, at the same time, there are some conditions under which automatic influences can be controlled or even changed.

Perspective taking (PT) is one of the researched interventions aimed at reducing stereotyping and prejudice through making narrower the distance between the ingroup and the outgroup, and between the self and the other (Galinsky, Ku, & Wang, 2005; Galinsky, Wang y Ku, 2008; Shih, Wang, Bucher, & Stotzer, 2009). Recently, perspective taking has been proposed by Galinsky, Wang, & Ku (2008) as a very robust and effective manipulation to cause individuals to think on their own and act in stereotype-consistent ways. The inclusion of stereotypical traits and behaviors in the self during perspective-taking was used by participants to increase social coordination.

As a matter of fact, there is a neurological basis which supports the idea that understanding of oneself is closely linked to understanding of others (Cacioppo, Visser, & Pickett, 2006). Perhaps discovering similarities between one’s own group and the outgroup can foster the belief of the basic equality between human communities.

But strategies of this kind may not be so strong and transferable as apparently shown by the evidence published in international journals. It´s necessary to consider that social contexts affect the development of stereotypes, prejudice, and racism (Teichman & Bar-Tal, 2008). Consequently, Allport´s Contact Theory, Rol Theory  and the Intergroup Emotions Theory could draw an axiological axis where we can ubicate an experimental implementation which is able to contemplate these three important theories that must be taken into account to eradicate bias. Under this mixed paradigm we can find Role Playing (RP) which can be considered a way to use the perspective taking and it could be also useful for educational contexts (Clapper, 2010). The main difference between both strategies, PT and RP, is the interaction that participants develop in the RP and the use of live emotions that appear during the discussions. Motivation and affect are also important grounds to build a reliable training in order to fight prejudice.

In our study, it is hypothesized that RP will reduce the level of implicit and explicit stereotyping and prejudice of Spanish educator students towards Moroccan people, and that some variables will moderate the effects of the interventions on intergroup bias.

Mackie, D. M., Maitner, A. T. y Smith, E. R. (2009). Intergroup emotions theory. En T. Nelson (Ed.), Handbook of Prejudice (pp. 285-307). New York, NY: Psychology Press. Clapper, T. C. (2010). Role Play and Simulation: Returning to Teaching for Understanding. Education Digest: Essential Readings Condensed for Quick Review, 75(8), 39-43. Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Cambridge, MA.: Addison-Wesley. Lawson, T. J., McDonough, T. A., & Bodle, J. H. (2010). Confronting prejudiced comments: Effectiveness of a role-playing exercise. Teaching of Psychology, 37(4), 257-261. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00986283.2010.510968 Plous, S. (2000). Responding to overt displays of prejudice: A role-playing exercise. Teaching of Psychology, 27(3), 198-200. Álvarez Castillo, González Castro, Ubillos Landa & González González, (2008) Assessing the effectiveness of a perspective taking strategy aimed at helping educator students take control over their cultural stereotypes and prejudices. Ecer 2008 Biddle, B.J. & Thomas, Edwin J. (Eds.) (1966). Role theory: Concepts and research. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Devine, P. G.. y Sharp L. B. (2009). Automaticity and control in stereotyping and prejudice. En T. Nelson (Ed.), Handbook of Prejudice (pp. 61-87). New York, NY: Psychology Press. Dijksterhuis, A. (2010). Automaticity and the unconscious. En S. Fiske, D. T. Gilbert y G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology (5ª ed.) (Vol. 1, pp. 228-267). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.