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

Abstract

The contact hypothesis proposes that intergroup contact improves outgroup attitudes. Existing cross-sectional and longitudinal studies provide valuable insights into the association between contact and attitudes, but are mostly uninformative regarding within-person and between-person effects. To investigate such effects, we applied (random-intercept) cross-lagged panel model analyses in two studies featuring diverse study characteristics. We found longitudinal associations between contact and attitudes in conventional cross-lagged panel models. These associations were, however, ascribed purely to between-person effects, not within-person effects, in random-intercept cross-lagged panel models. The lack of within-person effects conflicts with the contact hypothesis, which assumes that contact affects individuals’ attitudes. To investigate the possibility that between-person effects represent spurious correlations caused by confounders, we examined the extent to which demographic characteristics, intergroup ideologies and personality traits explain between-person effects. Our findings highlight the need to further investigate within-person effects and the factors that may explain between-person differences in contact and attitudes.

Intergroup contact and intended actions in support of disadvantaged groups: The role of affective processes and feelings of solidarity

“…Our use of cross-lagged panel models (CLPM) to test the longitudinal associations does not distinguish between-person and within-person variance, which would require testing a random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM; e.g., Berry & Willoughby, 2017;Friehs et al, 2022;Hamaker et al, 2015). A recent large, seven-wave longitudinal study using RI-CLPM did not find that contact predicted increased solidarity with the disadvantaged (Sengupta et al, 2023).…”

“…RI-CLPM captures temporal fluctuations around the individual person's means, but it is less sensitive to persisting long-term effects (Asendorpf, 2021;Orth et al, 2021). Because we had approximately 3-month intervals between data collection time points, CLPM was deemed appropriate given our research question and the nature of the design, 13 even though the analysis did not allow for testing contact effects on a within-person level (see Friehs et al, 2022;Sengupta et al, 2023).…”