Compared to the impressive amount of research on consequences of intergroup contact, relatively little work has been devoted to predictors of intergroup contact. Although opportunities for intergroup contact are constantly growing in modern diverse societies, these contact opportunities are not necessarily exploited. In the present review article, we describe current research on predictors of intergroup contact and drivers of contact seeking on a micro-, meso-, and macro-level. We provide an overview This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

Intergroup contact is a known remedy for complicated intergroup relations. At the same time, contact is rare in postconflict settings. In the present article, we examine whether exposure to narratives about moral exemplars (i.e., members of a perpetrator group who acted morally and in opposition to the passivity or aggression displayed by majority) could increase openness to contact among historical adversaries. In Study 1 (N = 73), presenting members of a historical perpetrator group with information about ingroup moral exemplars led to a decrease of prejudice towards individuals from a historical victim group, which, in turn, resulted in higher openness to contact with them. In Study 2 (N = 100) and 3 (N = 92), exposure to narratives about outgroup moral exemplars in a historically victimized group increased openness to contact with members of a perpetrator group. These effects were mediated by a decrease in prejudice (Studies 2 and 3) and by an increase in trust towards historical perpetrators (Study 2).

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Women face negative consequences for violating traditional gender stereotypes. In this research, we demonstrate that such regulatory function of stereotypes might extend to feminist campaigns that are seen as violating social expectations towards women. In Study 1 (Ntweets = 510,000), we investigated how two real-life movements: #metoo and #sexstrike, are viewed in terms of adhering to the traditional female stereotype of high warmth/communion and low competence/agency, as per language used in the tweets posted within each campaign. We found that the more popular movement, i.e., #metoo, was characterised by the use of more communal and less agentic content than the less popular movement, i.e., #sexstrike. In Study 2 (N = 195), we presented participants with descriptions of bogus movements equivalent to #metoo and #sexstrike and asked about their associations with and support for the campaigns. It was found that participants associated the #metoo-like campaign with more ‘feminine’ (e.g., community orientation) and less ‘masculine’ concepts (e.g., rebelliousness), which, in turn, translated to a greater declared support for this campaign. Controlling for feminist identification, political conservatism, and gender system justification did not affect the pattern of results.

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