In 2015, a study was published that claimed that reducing prejudice against homosexual people was relatively easy. All it took was a brief conversation with a stranger who was going door to door talking about prejudice against homosexuals. Supposedly, participants’ attitudes remained changed up to three months after said conversation.

The study received widespread media coverage and was considered groundbreaking because we knew so little about how to reduce prejudice. Unfortunately, it turned out to be built largely on fraudulent data, and the study was retracted.

Ironically, the researcher who uncovered the fraudulent data in this first canvassing study, David Broockman, has now published his own study on the same issue. It demonstrates that canvassing actually does change participants’ attitudes toward transgender individuals and that this change in attitudes persists for at least three months.

Prejudice against transgender people is pervasive in the US. They’re significantly more likely to be victims of violent crimes, to become homeless, and to experience health issues due to lack of adequate medical care. However, research on prejudice against transgender people is limited, and there are few field studies examining it. This new study published by Broockman and Joshua Kalla is not only one of the first to do so, but it identifies potential ways to attenuate it.

In the study, participants were randomized to receive a canvasser who would talk to them about either transgender prejudice (the experimental condition) or about recycling (the control condition). The canvassers who talked about prejudice used a scripted conversation that asked participants to recall a time when they were judged negatively, to help them empathize with transgender people who experience prejudice. This technique is known as “analogic perspective-taking.”

In addition, Broockman and Kalla also tested the “contact hypothesis,” which suggests that exposure to a member of a stigmatized group reduces prejudice toward that group. They tested it by including transgender canvassers in their study.

Before and after the conversation, participants were given a variety of survey questions. The researchers took care to conceal the true nature of the survey, which probed attitudes about transgender individuals. Participants showed no indications of suspicion about the true nature of the survey.

The study found that participants who were assigned to a canvasser who talked to them about transgender prejudice saw their prejudice on this topic drop. The change also had practical implications, as these participants became more supportive of a law that would protect transgender people from discrimination. Interestingly, the gender status of the canvasser did not affect the results—non-transgender and transgender canvassers were equally effective.

The researchers also decided to test whether exposure to a short attack ad would reverse the effects of the intervention. So they created an ad that promoted political stances that were prejudicial against transgender people.

They found that this attack ad temporarily reduced the positive effects of the canvassing intervention but that the participants still maintained an overall more positive attitude toward transgender people. Additionally, at the three-month follow-up, participants who were shown this attack ad still maintained more positive attitudes toward transgender people than they had prior to the intervention.

Transgender individuals suffer a larger number of violent crimes and receive far less adequate healthcare, largely due to prejudices held against them. If it’s truly as easy to change someone’s mind as having a conversation, maybe we can look forward to a drop in these adverse consequences in the future.

Science, 2016. DOI: 10.1126/science.aad9713, (About DOIs).