Effects Of Intergroup Contact Research Articles

Prolonged contact does not reshape locals' attitudes toward migrants in wartime settings

AbstractDespite record numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs) globally, we know little about the causal effects of intergroup contact between migrants and locals in active conflict settings. We conduct a randomized controlled trial of a vocational skills‐training program implemented by Mercy Corps that enrolled 2597 locals and migrants in near equal numbers in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where IDPs face daily prejudice and discrimination. Courses lasting up to 6 months emphasized collaborative learning and soft skills development. We surveyed participants at endline and followed up 8 months later. While the program provided the most sustained duration of intergroup contact (360–720 h) experimentally evaluated to date, we find no evidence of reported behavioral or attitudinal change by locals (N = 1276) toward migrants generally, regardless of classroom demographics or course duration. Our findings suggest that prolonged contact through vocational training programs is insufficient to improve relations in conflict settings.

The effects of positive and negative intergroup contact in virtual reality on outgroup attitudes: Testing the contact hypothesis and its mediators

The effects of positive and negative intergroup contact in virtual reality on outgroup attitudes: Testing the contact hypothesis and its mediators

Estimating the effect of intergroup contact over years: evidence from a youth program in Israel

Abstract We study how an intervention combining youth intergroup contact and sports affects intergroup relations in the context of an active conflict. We first conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of one-year program exposure in Israel. To track effects of a multiyear exposure, we then use machine-learning techniques to fuse the RCT with the observational data gathered on multiyear participants. This analytical approach can help overcome frequent limitations of RCTs, such as modest sample sizes and short observation periods. Our evidence cannot affirm a one-year effect on outgroup regard and ingroup regulation, although we estimate benefits of multiyear exposure among Jewish-Israeli youth, particularly boys. We discuss implications for interventions in contexts of active conflict and group status asymmetry.

Understanding Acculturation Strategies Through Intergroup Social Interaction: A Case Study of Thai Workers in Japan

Most studies of Thai workers in Japan are oriented towards low-skilled groups of workers. Unlike low-skilled workers, highly skilled migrant workers experience intense social interaction with Japanese colleagues, resulting in dynamics and degrees of intergroup relationships and acculturation process. This article therefore identifies acculturation strategies dominant among highly skilled Thai workers in Japanese working societies through the lens of intergroup contacts. It also explores the intergroup social interactions between Thai and Japanese people in workplaces and uncovers the effects of intergroup contact on the acculturation process. Narratives from interviews with 12 highly skilled Thai workers led to three findings. First, integration is predominantly identified as the most advantageous acculturation strategy. Second, positive intergroup social contact prevails on the condition that Thai workers strictly follow the norms and values in the workplaces, particularly behaviors which demonstrate a sense of selflessness. Finally, positive social contact between highly skilled Thai workers and Japanese people facilitates the integration process of highly skilled Thai workers. Based on the findings, some implications are discussed. 

Peer inclusion and school equality norm associations with intergroup contact, and academic self‐efficacy amongst ethnic majority and ethnic minority youth

AbstractSocial norms are important predictors of youth attitudes and behaviours. There is substantial evidence that positive and meaningful intergroup contact supported by inclusive norms can have a range of benefits beyond prejudice reduction. The present research explores whether perceived peer inclusion norms and perceived norms of equality in school are associated with better quality and more frequent intergroup contact and in turn, whether these are associated with better academic self‐efficacy. To test these assertions, we conducted a cross‐sectional survey with ethnic majority and ethnic minority youth aged 11–12 (n = 629, 48% female, 43% minority ethnic) attending one of four ethnically diverse secondary schools in England. In support of our hypotheses, we found that both perceived inclusive peer norms and perceived school equality norms were associated with higher quantity and quality of contact for both ethnic majority and minority group youth. An indirect effect was observed whereby perceived peer norms of inclusion and school norms of equality were associated with higher academic self‐efficacy through higher quality outgroup contact for both groups. No indirect effect was observed for contact quantity. Findings evidence the importance of perceived peer and school equality norms as well as intergroup contact effects for outcomes that go beyond prejudice reduction, in this case academic self‐efficacy.

The effect of positive inter-group contact on cooperation: the moderating role of individualism.

The effect of intergroup contact on cooperation is well documented, but little is known about the cultural moderators of this relationship. Contributing to the literature, we examined whether cultural orientation moderates the effect of positive intergroup contact on cooperation and places emphasis on individualism. By creating a gamecooperation situation by the trust game paradigm, 322 Taiwanese youth were involved in the study and completed the positive intergroup contact scale, individual-collectivism scale, and social distance scale. (1) positive intergroup contact effectively promotes cooperative behavior; (2) Taiwanese youth who have closer social distance with mainland youth demonstrate higher levels of cooperative behavior after group interactions than larger social distance; and (3) individualism has a significant moderating role in the relationship between positive inter-group contact and cooperation. The effect of positive inter-group contact on cooperation became stronger in the less individualistic group. The effect of social distance on cooperation became stronger in the less individualistic group.Cultural orientation represented by individualism is proved to be one moderato of the intergroup contact-cooperation relationship.

What people do matters during intergroup communication: Immediate and delayed effects of intergroup contact via cognitive, affective, and behavioral mediators

ABSTRACT Positive intergroup communication reduces outgroup prejudice. Attempting to decompose the effect of intergroup contact more precisely, we argue that engaging in different activities during intergroup communication influences prejudice through different pathways. We investigated whether exposure to interactive videos involving cognitive, affective, and behavioral activities reduces outgroup prejudice through relevant mediators (knowledge, empathy, and synchronization). We found support for the effect of dancing (behavioral activity) and language learning (cognitive activity) on outgroup prejudice through the relevant mediators: synchronization and knowledge, respectively. Also, we demonstrated a long-term effect of mediated intergroup contact: the mediation path from dance through synchronization lasted a week after the intervention. We discuss the importance of the content of intergroup communication and its implications for creating prejudice-reduction interventions.

It is worth taking a closer look: A field experiment on intergroup contact between Austrian pupils and refugees

Intergroup contact is an effective way to improve intergroup relations, but appropriate evaluative and field research is lacking. We assessed the short- and long-term effectiveness of intergroup contact between refugees and pupils with the workshop “Taking a Closer Look.” A total of 388 pupils from 11 Austrian schools were divided into two groups: the contact group attended the workshop including intergroup contact; and the no-contact group, without it. Intergroup contact predicted changes from 1 week before to immediately after the workshop: The pupils’ attitudes toward refugees improved in the contact group, whereas they remained unchanged in the no-contact group. Empathy, support for refugee-friendly policies, and willingness to engage in intergroup contact increased in both groups, but significantly stronger in the contact group. Intergroup anxiety decreased and knowledge about refugees increased equally in both groups. One month after the workshop, this knowledge gain remained stable in both groups, but the other effects disappeared.

Effects of Intergroup Contact in an Official Bilingual Language Teaching Context on Mutual Stereotypes

Purpose: This paper reports findings of an investigation of the effects of intergroup contact in a bilingual language teaching context on stereotypes of each group towards each other.   The pre and post intergroup contact attitudes of Cameroonian Anglophone Bilingual Teachers (ABT) and those of Francophone Bilingual Teachers (FBT) towards each other were determined and compared.
 Methodology: A mixed method research design that relied on a two-phase explanatory sequential strategy was employed to collect the data.  It comprised an anonymous self-report survey of 97 bilingual teachers and a follow-up interview of 6 of these teachers. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the quantitative data and content analysis was used to explore the textual data.
 Findings: The study revealed that while ABT indicated negative attitudes towards FBT, prior to starting their training, FBT on their part, expressed positive considerations of Anglophones (they saw them as polite, hospitable and hardworking people). In the end, ABT moved from seeing FBT as arrogant to calling them simple and assiduous learners. Nevertheless, they scorned the FBT’s insolence. The contact reinforced FBT’s prior training positive attitudes towards ABT whom they found to be friendly, convivial and courteous. 
 Recommendations: The study concludes that intergroup contact positively influenced ABT attitudes towards FBT, while FBT maintained their pre-training positive attitudes towards ABT. Intergroup contact in an official bilingual teacher training classroom, therefore, can be a fertile ground for the elimination of stereotypes and promotion of the spirit of living together.
  
  

Searching for the 'Muslims' in Czech Islamophobia and the Effects of Intergroup Contact in Challenging the 'Fear of the Unknown'

Searching for the 'Muslims' in Czech Islamophobia and the Effects of Intergroup Contact in Challenging the 'Fear of the Unknown'

A longitudinal test of secondary transfer effects of negative intergroup contact and mediating processes

AbstractPositive intergroup contact has not only been shown to be positively associated with favourable attitudes towards members of the contacted group but also with attitudes towards members of secondary outgroups (secondary transfer effect, STE). Only a few studies have addressed a potential STE of negative intergroup contact (i.e., a generalization of negative contact experiences to secondary outgroups). Furthermore, longitudinal studies on STEs and on underlying mediation processes are lacking. In the present research, we investigated the existence of a STE for negative (and positive) intergroup contact in four longitudinal samples with three (Studies 1a and 1b) and two waves (Studies 2 and 3; Noverall = 2052, time lags between waves 2 to 12 months). Our studies did not provide robust evidence for a STE of negative (and positive) contact, nor for indirect STEs via attitude generalization, ingroup identification or diversity beliefs. We discuss implications and suggest avenues for future research.

Intergroup Contact Alleviates Loneliness: The Extensive Effect of Common Ingroup Identity.

Previous studies show that intergroup contact, through common ingroup identity, has impact on intergroup processes such as reducing intergroup bias, improving intergroup relations, etc. The effect of intergroup contact on individual psychological process (through common ingroup identity), however, needs further exploration. Based on the positive effect of both intergroup contact and ingroup identification on mental health and well-being, this article proposes and tests a new model of individual loneliness reduction through intergroup contact by promoting common ingroup identity. A total of 263 majority ethnic members and 275 minority ethnic members from China participated in the survey. Intergroup contact, common ingroup identity and loneliness were measured at three time-points (T1-T3) over an 8-month period. Longitudinal mediation analysis and parallel process Latent Growth Curve Model for mediation are used for the examination of the indirect effect of common ingroup identity. Longitudinal mediation analysis showed that intergroup contact quality at T1 positively predicted common ingroup identity at T2, and common ingroup identity at T2 alleviated loneliness at T3. Intergroup contact quality at T1 was indirectly linked to loneliness at T3 via common ingroup identity at T2. The parallel process latent growth curve model for mediation confirmed the robustness of the indirect effect of common ingroup identity. In addition, the growth rate of the quality of intergroup contact increased the growth rate of common ingroup identity, but reduced the growth rate of loneliness. The current study revealed the protectiveness of intergroup contact and common ingroup identity on loneliness, viz., intergroup contact reduces individual loneliness by promoting common ingroup identity, the implication being that intergroup contact and common ingroup identity should be taken into account in intervening process of loneliness prevention so that an individual's physical and mental health could be better safeguarded.

Modelling effects of inter-group contact on links between population size and cultural complexity

Human populations rely on cultural artefacts for their survival. Populations vary dramatically in the size of their tool repertoires, and the determinants of these cultural repertoire sizes have been the focus of extensive study. A prominent hypothesis, supported by computational models of cultural evolution, asserts that tool repertoire size increases with population size. However, not all empirical studies have found such a correlation, leading to a contentious and ongoing debate. As a possible resolution to this longstanding controversy, we suggest that accounting for even rare cultural migration events that allow sharing of knowledge between different-sized populations may help explain why a population's size might not always predict its cultural repertoire size. Using an agent-based model to test assumptions about the effects of population size and connectivity on tool repertoires, we find that cultural exchange between a focal population and others, particularly with large populations, may significantly boost its tool repertoire size. Thus, two populations of identical size may have drastically different tool repertoire sizes, hinging upon their access to other groups' knowledge. Intermittent contact between populations boosts cultural repertoire size and still allows for the development of unique tool repertoires that have limited overlap between populations.

The Between-Person and Within-Person Effects of Intergroup Contact on Outgroup Attitudes: A Multi-Context Examination

The extensive literature on the contact hypothesis reports a positive association between intergroup contact and outgroup attitudes, yet it remains unknown whether this association reflects within-person (i.e., situational changes within individuals) or between-person (i.e., stable differences between individuals) effects. To investigate this question, we applied (random-intercept) cross-lagged panel models in two studies featuring different samples, measurements, and contexts. We found longitudinal contact–attitude associations in cross-lagged panel models, which cannot differentiate within-person and between-person effects. In random-intercept cross-lagged panel models, we identified between-person effects but not within-person effects. These results conflict with the contact hypothesis, which assumes that contact leads to intra-individual attitude change. We further investigated whether between-person effects represent spurious correlations caused by potential confounders (demographic characteristics, personality, and intergroup ideologies), but found that this was not the case. Our findings highlight the need to further investigate within-person effects and potential explanations of between-person differences in contact and attitudes.

Context and Contact: Unifying the Study of Environmental Effects on Politics

A growing literature explores how local environments, or contexts, affect political behavior, especially by shaping interpersonal contact with social out-groups. While many studies still draw directly on long-standing hypotheses from contact theory, this research agenda increasingly focuses on new research questions, beyond the classic social psychology literature, and new empirical cases, including from across the lower- and middle-income world. We develop a typology of forms of context and contact to aid the aggregation of findings across disparate cases and demonstrate that the mechanisms that may account for the political effects of intergroup context and contact are broader than those typically explored in psychologically oriented research. We propose future directions for research in this area, including greater focus on the intersection of ethnic and class-based contact and greater attention to how built or computer-based environments may mediate or mirror the effects of demographic contexts.

Meta-analysis of the "ironic" effects of intergroup contact.

Growing evidence suggests that intergroup contact, psychology's most-researched paradigm for reducing prejudice, has the "ironic" effect of reducing support for social change in disadvantaged groups. We conducted a preregistered meta-analytic test of this effect across 98 studies with 140 samples of 213,085 disadvantaged-group members. As predicted, intergroup contact was, on average, associated with less perceived injustice (r = -.07), collective action (r = -.06), and support for reparative policies (r = -.07). However, these associations were small, variable, and consistent with alternative explanations. Across outcomes, 25%-36% of studies found positive associations with intergroup contact. Moderator analyses explained about a third of the between-sample variance, showing that, at least for perceived injustice, associations with intergroup contact were most consistently negative in studies that measured direct, qualitatively positive contact among adults. We also found evidence for an alternative explanation for the apparent "ironic" effects of intergroup contact as, after controlling for the positive association of negative contact with support for social change, positive contact was no longer associated with any of the outcomes. We close by discussing the strengths and limitations of the available evidence and by highlighting open questions about the relationship between intergroup contact and support for social change in disadvantaged groups. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The Limitations of Intergroup Friendship: Using Social Network Analysis to Test the Pathways Linking Contact and Intergroup Attitudes in a Multigroup Context

Recent research on intergroup contact theory has emphasized the potency of cross-group friendship for reducing prejudice. Evaluating this claim requires consideration of competing friend influence and selection processes. Few studies have jointly tested these mechanisms and often only in limited, majority/minority group contexts. In this study, the authors articulate several mechanisms linking friendships with intergroup attitudes and test them in a diverse U.S. context (two large high schools with significant representations of multiple ethnoracial groups). The analysis involves a longitudinal network model of friendship and attitude coevolution. The findings indicate that ingroup friends influenced intergroup contact attitudes (ICAs) over time, while more open ICAs promoted selection into cross-group friendship. By contrast, effects of cross-group friendships on ICAs were limited to White students with Black friends. These findings suggest that the effect of intergroup contact is overstated in the context of friendship and that more focus should be paid to understanding other friendship dynamics.

Mental health of asylum seekers and refugees: The role of trauma and postmigration living difficulties and the moderating effect of intergroup contact

Refugees undergo traumatic events during the premigration and transit phases and also experience severe difficulties after resettlement in a new country, and they are therefore at high risk of developing mental health problems. The present studies examined if intergroup contact with members of the receiving society moderates these negative impacts on refugees’ mental health. Two studies with refugees in Switzerland (N = 262) revealed both buffering and exacerbating effects of intergroup contact. Having more Swiss friends was associated with a less negative relationship between postmigration living difficulties and mental health. Surprisingly, having more Swiss friends was also associated with a more negative relationship between traumatization and mental health. These results suggest that intergroup contact may help refugees adjust to the living conditions in the receiving society, but may pose a risk regarding trauma-related disorders.

Longitudinal effects of direct and extended intergroup contact in multi-ethnic communities in Croatia

The purpose of this study was to examine the reciprocal longitudinal associations between different measures of direct and extended intergroup contact and various intergroup outcomes among majority and minority adolescents from four intergroup contexts in the Republic of Croatia. The research was carried out in two waves on a sample of 1,150 elementary and high school students, members of Croatian majority, and Serbian, Hungarian, Czech, and Italian minority. Cross-lagged path analysis revealed that direct contacts predict less social distance and more prosocial behavior, while extended contacts predict lower ingroup bias over time. However, we found even more effects in the reversed temporal direction. Lower initial bias and social distance, as well as greater prosocial behavior predicted more direct and extended contacts over time. Furthermore, none of the examined longitudinal associations differed between majority and minority members or across the four intergroup contexts.

Solidarity across group lines: Secondary transfer effect of intergroup contact, perceived moral distance, and collective action

AbstractWe tested, in three studies, whether the generalization of contact effects from primary to secondary outgroups—the secondary transfer effect (STE)—occurs for collective action. The results supported a serial mediation model: contact with immigrants by advantaged group members (Italians: Study 1, N = 146, 121 females, Mage = 28.31 years; Study 3, N = 406, 239 females, Mage = 36.35; British people, Study 2, N = 160, 113 females, Mage = 32.31) was associated with lower perceived moral distance toward primary outgroups, which in turn was associated with more positive attitudes and greater collective action intentions toward primary outgroups, and lower perceived moral distance toward secondary outgroups. Lower perceived moral distance toward secondary outgroups and stronger collective action intentions toward the primary outgroup were associated with higher collective action intentions toward secondary outgroups (results were inconsistent for attitudes). We discuss the findings with a focus on how a consideration of perceived moral distance extends current theorizing, and the relevance of generalized prejudice for the STE.