Attitudes towards foreigners are widely researched, most frequently in survey studies. However, in that context it is often unclear which attitude object respondents have in mind, and thus what their answers refer to. This paper uses a representative sample of 3,195 Germans who reported which groups they think of when thinking about foreigners living in Germany. We found that Germans disproportionately think of groups who are Muslim, and that such salience is associated with more negative attitudes towards “foreigners.” This holds true when controlling for attitudes towards Muslims; in fact, thinking of Muslim groups when thinking about foreigners moderates the relationship between anti-Muslim and anti-foreigner attitudes. The relationships were weaker when respondents think of Turks, a large and long-standing minority in Germany, suggesting an attenuation of the links through familiarity or intergroup contacts. No relationship was found between thinking of refugees and attitudes towards foreigners. Implications for research are discussed, particularly regarding the interpretation of self-reported attitudes towards foreigners and the study of populist strategies.

Discrimination is widespread and often goes unchallenged because bystanders do not recognize the need to intervene or do not know how to intervene. This field experiment with adolescents (N = 639) tested a group discussion designed to increase perceived importance and self‐efficacy around challenging general discrimination. The intervention, which involved perspective‐taking and action‐planning, was tested with delayed measures against active control conditions, namely sessions on self‐disclosure and civic engagement. It led to greater self‐efficacy, particularly among White participants. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

Across democracies, education predicts electoral participation and political interest. Here, German students on the pre-vocational and pre-academic educational tracks are compared to show how these differences emerge, and thus indicate how they can be addressed. In a Preliminary Study, a large dataset (3747 participants) revealed that there is a gap in political interest between the tracks, and that this predicts a gap in voting intentions. Study 1 (228 participants) tested three mediators of the relationship between educational tracks and voting intentions. Differences in civic understanding primarily explained the link between educational track and voting intentions. Lastly, in Study 2, 23 semi-structured interviews explored how limited civic understanding constrains political engagement among students on the pre-vocational track, indicating that a narrow understanding of power and a lack of sociological imagination are key. The finding that the gaps emerge due to differences in civic understanding, which is teachable, suggests that schools can play an effective role in addressing them. Limitations and implications are discussed.

Valuing diversity and intergroup contact predict less prejudice and discrimination, yet their relationship deserves closer attention. The evidence suggests that valuing diversity and (interest in) intergroup contact are associated, but the directionality is not clear, and it has not been tested whether the established effects of contact come about through changes in valuing diversity. We address this in three studies. In Study 1 (N = 211), using longitudinal survey data, both positive and negative contact affected the value placed on diversity over time, while valuing diversity did not significantly predict the frequency of future contact. Studies 2 (N = 224) and 3 (N = 2,618) consequently considered valuing diversity as a mediator and showed that it mediates the relationships of intergroup contact with prejudice, behavioral intentions, and policy support. Our results increase the understanding of pathways from intergroup contact to intergroup relations and offer a lever that contact interventions can target.

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