Imagined contact encourages prosocial behavior towards outgroup members

Abstract

According to the intergroup contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954), we can reduce prejudice between different cultural groups by encouraging interaction between them. Volumes of evidence have now supported this hypothesis. Pettigrew and Tropp's (2006) meta-analysis of 515 studies confirms the robust, negative relationship between contact and prejudice. This effect is strengthened by certain "optimal" conditions (e.g., equal status of the groups in the situation, intergroup cooperation, common goals, and authority support), but remains even in their absence. The prejudicereducing effect of contact also holds for groups others than ethnic minorities for whom the hypothesis was originally formulated, including groups stigmatized on the basis of their sexuality, age, and religion (Brown & Hewstone, 2005). This is a simple, yet powerful effect. Having a positive, friendly encounter with groups that Abstract Imagined contact is a relatively new technique designed to focus the accumulated knowledge of over 500 studies of intergroup contact into a simple and versatile prejudice-reduction intervention. While it is now clear that imagined contact can improve intergroup attitudes, its ability to change actual intergroup behavior is less well established. Some emerging findings provide cause for optimism with nonverbal, and unobtrusive measures of behavior. This paper extends this work by adopting methods from behavioral economics to examine more deliberative behavior. Participants believed they were playing a prisoner's dilemma with an outgroup member. They could choose whether to cooperate or compete with the other player. In three studies, we provide reliable evidence that imagined contact (vs. control) successfully encouraged more prosocial, cooperative choices. In the third study we show that this effect is mediated by increased trust towards the outgroup member. The findings demonstrate that imagined contact interventions can have a tangible impact on volitional intergroup behaviors.

Don’t hurt my outgroup friend: A multifaceted form of imagined contact promotes intentions to counteract bullying

“…Research has provided evidence for several mediators of the effects of imagined contact, which largely overlap with those identified for direct contact. In particular, there is evidence that the effects of imagined contact are mediated by outgroup attitudes (Birtel & Crisp, 2012b, Study 3;Harwood et al, 2011;Husnu & Crisp, 2010a;West, Hotchin, & Wood, 2017), infrahumanization (Prati & Loughnan, 2018), outgroup trust (Hodson, Dube, & Choma, 2015;Meleady & Seger, 2016;Pagotto, Visintin, De Iorio, & Voci, 2013;, intergroup anxiety (Birtel & Crisp, 2012b;Ioannou, Hewstone, & Al Ramiah, 2016;Stathi Tsantila, et al, 2012;West & Greenland, 2016;West, Holmes, & Hewstone, 2011) and perspective-taking (Husnu & Crisp, 2015). Outgroup attitudes (Stathi et al, 2014), outgroup trust and self-disclosure have been shown to mediate the imagined contact effect in children.…”

“…Husnu & Crisp, 2010a, 2010bStathi, Cameron, Hartley, & Bradford, 2014;R. N. Turner, West, & Christie, 2013), helping intentions , and behavior (e.g., Birtel & Crisp, 2012a;Meleady & Seger, 2016;.…”

Member-to-member generalisation in trust behaviour: How do prior experiences inform prosocial behaviour towards novel ingroup and outgroup members?

“…Finseraas et al 2019), and much of this work relies on self-reports of previous contact experiences and attitudes or mentally simulating positive contact (e.g. Meleady and Seger 2017).…”

Imagined contact can be more effective for participants with stronger initial prejudices

“…Since Turner et al () first demonstrated that imagined contact could reduce prejudice, a growing body of subsequent research has also found support for the “imagined contact hypothesis” (Crisp & Turner, , p. 125; see Miles & Crisp, for a meta analysis), showing that imagined contact can reduce intergroup anxiety (Turner et al, ; West, Holmes, & Hewstone, ), improve intergroup attitudes (Turner & Crisp, ), reduce implicit prejudice as well as explicit prejudice (Turner & Crisp, ), and alter subsequent behavior (Meleady & Seger, ; Turner & West, ; West, Turner, & Levita, 2015).…”