Discrimination-related hate crimes abound in the United States, with 7,400 hate crimes being reported to the FBI in 2003 alone. The hate-crime problem can be explained by people's "unfortunate human tendency...to protect their own while finding a scapegoat to blame the problem on" (DeAngelis). The mechanism behind hate crimes is the "outgroup homogeneity effect," where "people tend to see groups they're not a part of as more homogeneous than their own group" (DeAngelis). Psychologist Charles Judd explains that people who exhibit this effect are "more willing to ignore individuating information about members of outgroups, lumping them all into a single disliked category," and ascribing to them a "cultural 'essence,' a sort of innate temperament they erroneously believe defines the entire culture" (DeAngelis). The problem of bias-related attacks is something that "every major city in the country grapples with," and most attacks are sparked by bias in race or sexual orientation, with other biases including "religion, national origin, political ideology, and gender identity" (Chansanchai). A solution is urgently needed to stem the tide of hate crimes in the United States, and the solution must be a novel one that can get past biased individuals' lack of desire to change. This paper posits that the best approach for addressing the hate crime issue is in specially developed games, quizzes, and media productions.
Since the real problem behind hate crimes is a failure to individuate, lumping all dark-colored people together as "Arabs," for example, this approach would be geared toward enabling people to distinguish the differences among people of other races, sexual orientation, religion, and other groups. Video games could be developed in which all of the characters are members of outgroups that would normally be lumped together by biased individuals. Through playing the game, the players would learn to individuate to ea<...