"Mexico" (THEPALMER/iStockphoto.com)

Humans don’t like being pushed around, especially when it’s some pencil neck psychology brochure doing the pushing and it’s telling them not to hate another group. This is America, you can’t tell an American who not to hate! This is America! You pushy psychology brochure!

This, in a nutshell, is the finding of a study coming out in the journal Psychological Science. I don’t have my hands on it so I don’t know the particulars, but I can assure you that participants were divided into three groups. The control group was given no literature reinforcing prosocial behavior like not committing hate crimes or assuming everyone from “Mexico” is a criminal. The two active groups were given brochures that both opposed prejudice, but the researchers found that exactly how you get this point across requires some finesse.

If you’re a brochure that extolls the virtues of Getting Along and Being Nice to Everybody, and maybe puts down those other guys who harbor prejudice and resentment of ethnic groups but in a between us kind of way, then the world will love you. You know you can trust your reader to make the right choice on his own. You will be a loved brochure.

But, if you’re one of those pushy brochures that tells people they shouldn’t hate other groups, well, people don’t like you one single bit. In fact, if you’re a brochure that points out that the reader may even have a shortcoming if he is prejudiced, then you may even have the opposite effect. In fact, the data suggests you may just drive the reader to go out and hate people even more, just to show you, the stupid brochure who thinks it’s so big.

Humans.