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Read this Phycology Today article to find out how new new rules can shape attitude and not just behavior.

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If you're hoping to save the planet, you might think that your first task is convincing everyone about the threats of climate change. Or if you're hoping to convince people to practice "social distancing" and avoid bars and clubs as the world deals with COVID-19, you might think you should first persuade them to form a positive opinion of such public health initiatives. After all, if you could move people's opinions, you can change their behavior.

Sure, people's opinions are often indicative of their future behavior. People who prefer a certain brand of shampoo will buy that brand at the store. People who support a particular policy at work are happy to comply with it. The relationship between attitudes and behavior isn't perfect, but the link is often there.

But what if this is a two-way street? Our attitudes can guide our behavior, but could our behavior shape our attitudes? If this is the case, then focusing on ways to shape people's behavior could eventually result in changes to their opinions.
The Case of Seat Belt Legislation
In 1975, the Swedish government enacted a law requiring front-seat passengers in private cars to wear a seat belt. Before this law, roughly 30% of people were wearing seat belts. A few months after the law went into effect, 85% of people wore seat belts. Pretty effective!

But Swedes weren't clamoring for this legislation. A few years before the law, a nationally representative survey found that people typically believed seat belts were uncomfortable and inconvenient, and they were skeptical that they were all that effective.

Nevertheless, the new law certainly changed people's behavior. Did it change their attitudes as well? Gunilla Fhanér and Monica Hane looked at another nationally representative survey of hundreds of Swedes in 1976. They found that after the law was enacted, people thought seat belts were more comfortable, less inconvenient, and more effective at preventing injuries, compared to responses in the 1971 survey.
Social Judgments Following New Laws
The previous example highlights how people's evaluations of everyday safety features can change with legislation, but laws might also shape how we see other people and judge their behavior.

For example, in 2009, prostitution was criminalized in Norway. When they looked at national surveys, Andreas Kotsdam and Niklas Jakobsson found that at least in Oslo, where exposure to prostitution had been quite high, people judged prostitution as more wrong following the new law.

More recently, Eugene Ofosu and his colleagues looked at whether laws allowing same- sex marriage in the United States may have changed attitudes toward non-heterosexual people. They were able to look at about a million measures of people's prejudice over many years to see whether those prejudices depended on whether that person's state had legalized same-sex marriage. After legalization, anti-gay bias began to decline more sharply.

These shifts in anti-gay prejudices following same-sex marriage laws have also been shown in Europe.
What Do Laws Have to Do With It?
There are plenty of reasons why changes in the law trickle down into people's personal opinions. I'll briefly touch on a few explanations.

First, the theory of cognitive dissonance has long been in the business of explaining how behavior shapes attitudes. The main idea is that people crave a sense of coherence in the world, so they will adjust their own attitudes to align with their behavior. In a classic example of this, children were forbidden from playing with a particular toy, and eventually, they said, "You know, I don't even like that toy." For Swedes who started wearing seat belts, it just wouldn't make sense to still hate the thing they do all the time.

New regulations might also open our eyes to misconceptions we've had. Indeed, some studies indicate that when people erroneously think something is bad, they typically don't discover the truth because when given the choice, they avoid engaging with it altogether. But legal mandates may require people to confront things they didn't like. For instance, seat belts might seem uncomfortable, but it's only when you're required to wear them that you realize they're not so bad.

Finally, laws can communicate a society's moral priorities. In one set of controlled experiments, when a trusted institution enforced severe punishment for a particular behavior, people came to view that behavior as more immoral.
Legislation as Persuasion
In sum, there seems to be plenty of evidence that enacting new laws that primarily regulate people's behavior can eventually affect people's opinions.

But not so fast! I'm sure you can think of times when laws and regulations are rejected by the public. The next challenge is to understand when laws ultimately shape public opinion and when they don't. In fact, in some cases, laws can create backlash. We know from years of research on the concept of "psychological reactance" that forcing people to do something can be counterproductive, provoking exactly the behaviors a law is trying to get rid of.

Nevertheless, it still seems that gentle nudges to change people's behaviors can start a process of opinion change. So it might be difficult to convince everyone about the perils of climate change and the virtues of eco-friendly living, but regulations that encourage environmentally friendly choices may ultimately get us there. And maybe enacting measures that require people to avoid bars and restaurants can eventually get the public to support these public health measures more generally.

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If you're hoping to save the planet, you might think that your first task is convincing everyone about the threats of climate change. Or if you're hoping to convince people to practice "social distancing" and avoid bars and clubs as the world deals with COVID-19, you might think you should first persuade them to form a positive opinion of such public health initiatives.

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The reason why I chose my topic to be hate crimes is that I saw a real-life example of how stereotypes are created, and It got me thinking. I saw this real-life example of stereotyping and prejudice in the book, Inside the Real Area 51. In this book, I saw how aliens were talked about like they were dangerous, bad, and harmful. When in truth, we know absolutely nothing about aliens. Whether they exist or not. I soon realized that the problem was not the aliens, but us. We as a society need to realize that none of us are more or less than. And creating new laws to strengthen rules and penalties for hate crimes will reduce the number of hate crimes committed.

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Can Laws Actually Reduce and Prevent Hate Crimes? I Would Hate for You to Not Find Out.

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Can Laws Actually Reduce and Prevent Hate Crimes? I Would Hate for You to Not Find Out.

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While reading the book, Inside the Real Area 51, I couldn't help but notice how people were so against Aliens just because they looked different. Whether you believe in Aliens or not, you know that people can judge other people before they even get to know them. Believing in a stereotype is not uncommon at all. For example, I bet we have all thought before that people that wear glasses are smarter. But as we get older, we learn that stereotypes aren't true. Some individuals just never grow out of the prejudice they hold. Not for aliens or people wearing glasses, but for groups of minorities. Holding a prejudice against a group of people leads to discrimination. This unfortunately leads to hate crimes. Stronger and more clear laws need to be made to stop and prevent hate crimes.

The Psychology of Hate Crimes talks about how many Offenders have no other motive than that they don’t like people who are, and look, different from them. This extreme form of prejudice is created from stereotypes that society has labeled people as. The only way that stereotyping would stop is if we can change the mindset of people. And we can do that by changing the laws.

You may ask, How do we change the mindset of people? An article from Psychology Today has some answers. It reads, “In 1975, the Swedish government enacted a law requiring front-seat passengers in private cars to wear a seat belt. Before this law, roughly 30% of people were wearing seat belts. A few months after the law went into effect, 85% of people wore seat belts.” (Luttrell) This is not all, they also found that after the law was enacted, people thought seat belts were more comfortable, less inconvenient, and more effective at preventing injuries, compared to responses in the 1971 survey.” (Lutrell) So the laws didn't just change the behavior or the people, it also changed their mindset. If we strengthened hate crime laws, we could change people's opinions and change the prejudice that some people have.

This ProCon article speaks about how some people are against stronger hate crimes laws because they argue that these laws would further separate minorities. But I disagree. If different minority groups are targeted more than others, we need to give them more laws because they are in more need. For example, if Black Americans are being targeted 10x more than white Americans, we shouldn't give them the same amount of hate crime laws. Because then it would help out a group that didn't need help in the first place. Fair isn't always equal.

I recently created a survey that was taken by 13 CMS students. The question was, “Have you ever heard of a hate crime against someone with whom you share a religion, race, ethnic background, or sexual orientation with?” The result was that almost 70% of the students said yes. This is not right nor fair.  Hate crimes are more common than people think, and children are affected as well as adults. When a person hears of a hate crime committed against someone like them, it hurts their self-esteem to know that people can hate you for what you look like, and what you believe in. Being Jewish, I know that there is a lot of antisemitism in the world.  And honestly, it makes me scared and upset. And to know that almost 70% of students who took my survey in the class feel the same way is very upsetting.

Additionally, I interviewed my mom to see her opinion on hate crime laws. While asking the question… “Do you think that stronger hate crime laws would lessen the number of hate crimes and why?” She said, “Definitely...very often hate crimes aren't labeled and prosecuted as hate crimes...For example, the recent shooting in Atlanta is still not being called a hate crime even though six of the eight victims were of Asian American descent” From her response I can see that my mom is upset about the recent shooting in Atlanta not being called a hate crime when it appears to be targeted at a certain race. This could change if we had more clear laws defining what a hate crime is.

Hate crimes can happen to too many people, and they need to be better prevented and stopped. Stronger laws are needed to be in place and enforced for this to happen. Anyone can fall victim to a hate crime. That’s why this topic is so important and should be talked about more. I know that not everyone can change laws and fix a huge problem like this, but something that everyone can do is try and not create stereotypes. Because in the end, this is all caused by stereotypes.