Our study examines the effect of an educational intervention on perceptions of the racial wealth gap. The video, titled “Manyopoly,” utilizes a rigged game of Monopoly to explain the structural causes of the racial wealth gap.  The video shows two players playing under different rules of the game. Player one is bound by the standard rules of Monopoly. Player 2 starts with less money, goes to jail more frequently, collects less money when passing go, and can only buy low-cost properties. Player 2 accumulates much less wealth than Player 1 in the first round. The rules are equalized in Round 2, but by the end of the game, Player 2 is still not able to accumulate as much wealth as Player 1. The video explains that this is representative of the racial wealth gap, detailing the impacts of slavery, Jim Crow, and other discriminatory practices in US history on wealth accumulation.

To assess the efficacy of this educational intervention, we conducted three studies with a no video control condition and an intervention condition. We administered questionnaires that probed how the intervention changed attitudes like causes of the wealth gap and severity of racism across three time points. Most importantly, we assessed support for policies like a federal tax credit for descendants of enslaved people and revising the way  history is taught in schools to reduce the racial wealth gap. We did a mini-meta analysis that revealed the intervention had a small statistically significant effect on positively changing overall policies (d = -.179, p < .001). This means that educational interventions may be effective in changing attitudes about policies, with particular implications for nonprofit or governmental organizations.