Shedding light on the prejudices of Hungarians by a campaign film – VIDEO

444.hu reported that according to previous studies, Hungary is one of the countries with the most prejudice in Europe. Hungarians often judge and stigmatize people based on their appearance or on their presumed belonging to different social groups and because of these, they always keep some distance from these people.

Consequently, the Heroes Square Initiative took the matter into its hands with the attempt to ameliorate the situation. 3 weeks after the HeroiKon conference, it decided to start a new campaign film about prejudices that was finally produced by Young & Rubicam Group while the media work was carried out by the MEC media agency.

In the video, they ask the same question from everyday people of different age, gender and social background:

if they were ahead of a heart transplantation, would they opt for the Gypsy donor or the brown-eyed, fair-haired man from whom it is only later revealed that is homosexual.

From the answers of the participants, their prejudices towards the different groups of people are more or less revealed but after getting to know them better, they find themselves face-to-face with the harsh reality and their own unknown prejudices.

Here, you can find the video about the experiment. You can also click on the subtitles at the bottom.

The co-founder of the Heroes Square Initiation, professor Philip Zimbardo says,

prejudices are generally encoded in human beings.

Athough during evolution, communal spirit brings positive things into our lives and helps us to find our way in the world, it also exempts us from the intellectual and emotional work of getting to know better people who seem to be different from us. In fact, this is the mechanism that rests in obscurity, but reveals how humans really work. Furthermore, these particular unconscious mechanisms eventually lead to prejudices.

That is why it is of utmost importance to be aware of our preconceptions when it comes to thinking about ourselves or others. What we need is to question these sometimes automatic thoughts to eventually make our well-grounded decisions.

The Heroes Square Initiation also took part in the HeroiKon conference 3 weeks ago to raise its voice against prejudices. Apart from Zimbardo, other foreign and Hungarian people also expressed their views on this issue from scientific points of view or through the drama of their private life and they attempted to come up with some possible solution to get out of it. Among the performers was Sarah Mardini, the Syrian girl who pulled their boat full of refugees to the coast with her sibling, and the Arab and Jewish dad who lost his children in the Arab-Israeli war, since which he preaches about peace and sympathy towards others.