Contextual effect of positive intergroup contact on outgroup prejudice

Oliver Christ; Katharina Schmid; Simon Lolliot; Hermann Swart; Dietlind Stolle; Nicole Tausch; Ananthi Al Ramiah; Ulrich Wagner; Steven Vertovec; Miles Hewstone

doi:10.1073/pnas.1320901111

Edited by Susan T. Fiske, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, and approved February 3, 2014 (received for review November 8, 2013)

Significance

Although mixed social environments can provoke conflict, where this diversity promotes positive intergroup contact, prejudice is reduced. Seven multilevel studies demonstrate that the benefits of intergroup contact are broader than previously thought. Contact not only changes attitudes for individuals experiencing direct positive intergroup contact, their attitudes are also influenced by the behavior (and norms) of fellow ingroup members in their social context. Even individuals experiencing no direct, face-to-face intergroup contact can benefit from living in mixed settings where fellow ingroup members do engage in such contact. Two longitudinal studies rule out selection bias as an explanation for these findings on the contextual level. Prejudice is a function not only of whom you interact with, but also of where you live.

Abstract

We assessed evidence for a contextual effect of positive intergroup contact, whereby the effect of intergroup contact between social contexts (the between-level effect) on outgroup prejudice is greater than the effect of individual-level contact within contexts (the within-level effect). Across seven large-scale surveys (five cross-sectional and two longitudinal), using multilevel analyses, we found a reliable contextual effect. This effect was found in multiple countries, operationalizing context at multiple levels (regions, districts, and neighborhoods), and with and without controlling for a range of demographic and context variables. In four studies (three cross-sectional and one longitudinal) we showed that the association between context-level contact and prejudice was largely mediated by more tolerant norms. In social contexts where positive contact with outgroups was more commonplace, norms supported such positive interactions between members of different groups. Thus, positive contact reduces prejudice on a macrolevel, whereby people are influenced by the behavior of others in their social context, not merely on a microscale, via individuals’ direct experience of positive contact with outgroup members. These findings reinforce the view that contact has a significant role to play in prejudice reduction, and has great policy potential as a means to improve intergroup relations, because it can simultaneously impact large numbers of people.

Footnotes

↵¹To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: christ{at}staff.uni-marburg.de or miles.hewstone{at}psy.ox.ac.uk.

Author contributions: O.C., K.S., S.L., H.S., D.S., N.T., A.A.R., U.W., S.V., and M.H. designed research; O.C., K.S., H.S., D.S., A.A.R., and M.H. performed research; O.C. analyzed data; O.C., K.S., S.L., H.S., D.S., N.T., A.A.R., U.W., and M.H. commented on multiple prior analyses and article drafts; and O.C. and M.H. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
*Study 1d included a large sample of various minority groups in the United Kingdom (n = 798; e.g., Blacks, Asians). The ICC for the prejudice measure was small (0.02), resulting in a nonconvergence of our analysis, so we could not test the contextual effect for minority group members.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1320901111/-/DCSupplemental.

Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.