Watching 17 minutes of YouTube videos can drive down prejudice: Study
Watching just 17 minutes of YouTubers talking about their struggles with mental health drives down prejudice, University of Essex research has suggested.
Viewers' perceptions of disorders declined with prejudice towards mental health falling by 8% and intergroup anxiety levels plummeting by 11 per cent.
The study, published in Scientific Reports, explored how connections felt by people towards YouTube creators they watch - known as parasocial relationships - can impact behaviour.
As part of the research, hundreds of people watched videos of a woman who then revealed she had a borderline personality disorder (BPD) and discussed common misconceptions about her condition.
After watching just 17 minutes of her content, levels of explicit prejudice and intergroup anxiety dropped.
A follow-up survey one week later suggested lower prejudice levels were maintained and around 10 per cent of participants had taken actions that further support mental health initiatives, such as fundraising.
The study was led by Dr Shaaba Lotun who said: "This is an exciting piece of research which is vital considering the impact online content has on people's lives. There are more than 2.5 billion active users on YouTube every month and it can have a huge impact on the global conversation. We wanted to see if a creator talking about their mental health disorder could positively impact the people watching them."
The collaborative study between the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering and the Department of Psychology.
In total 333 participants with an average age of 26 took part in the online study, with 191 women, 126 men, and 3 non-binary people studied.
They were split into three groups and shown different videos with
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