“Treating” Prejudice

Birtel, Michèle D.; Crisp, Richard J.

doi:10.1177/0956797612443838

Cited by 60 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Husnu and colleagues first demonstrated this effect in the context of prolonged conflicts in Cyprus (Crisp, Husnu, Meleady, Stathi, & Turner, 2010;. Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot participants who imagined having contact with members of the opposite group subsequently expressed greater intentions to positively engage with previously stigmatized groups in the future (see also Asbrock, Gutenbrunner, & Wagner, 2013;Birtel & Crisp, 2012a;Stathi, Crisp, & Hogg, 2011;Vezzali, Stathi, Crisp, & Capozza, 2015). In a similar vein, imagined contact has been shown to change approach and avoidance behavioral tendencies.…”

Section: The Behavioral Consequences Of Imagined Contactmentioning

confidence: 95%

Imagined contact encourages prosocial behavior towards outgroup members

Meleady

Seger

2016

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

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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.

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Section: The Behavioral Consequences Of Imagined Contactmentioning

confidence: 95%

Imagined contact encourages prosocial behavior towards outgroup members

Meleady

Seger

2016

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

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“…In their studies, the effects of negative contact on attitudes were hypothesised to be conditional upon the presence (or absence) of positive contact. Fell et al proposed that such interaction effects could take four possible forms: (i) 'buffering', in which positive contact mitigates the detrimental effects of negative contact by reducing the perceived 'fit' between negative contact and pre-existing negative outgroup stereotypes; (ii) 'facilitation', where positive contact yields enhanced benefits in the presence of negative contact by creating a more extreme contrast from the presumed neutral point (reported for imagined contact by Birtel & Crisp, 2012); (iii) 'poisoning', in which negative contact reduces the benefits of positive contact because of its greater potential to increase the salience of group boundaries; and (iv) 'exacerbation', when positive contact exacerbates the harmful effects of negative contact, the mirror image of facilitation, when the contrast from the neutral point shifts towards the negative pole. In three field studies, including two longitudinal designs, Fell et al provided consistent evidence for two of these interaction effects: in all three studies, the effects of positive contact were larger in the presence of above-average levels of negative contact ('facilitation'); and in only one study was the effect of negative contact weaker in the presence of above-average levels of positive contact ('buffering').…”

Section: Understanding the Joint Effects Of Positive And Negative Intmentioning

confidence: 99%

Positive and negative intergroup contact: Interaction not asymmetry

Árnadóttir

Lolliot

Brown

et al. 2018

Euro J Social Psych

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This research reports a novel investigation into the comparative effects of positive and negative direct and extended intergroup contact on intergroup orientations. It tested the generality of the positive–negative asymmetry effect among majority (N = 357) and minority (N = 101) group members in Iceland. Little evidence of asymmetry was observed: the beneficial effects of positive contact were mostly as strong as the detrimental effects of negative contact, for both direct and extended contact. However, evidence was found for alternative interaction models in which positive contact buffers the negative effects of negative contact, and negative contact enhances the benefits of positive contact. These interaction effects were found only for direct contact and principally in the majority group, but were also found for the minority group, though more weakly. No interaction was observed for extended contact. It appeared that differential group salience elicited by positive and negative contact could partly contribute to the explanation of the observed effects, at least in the majority sample.

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“…McDonald, Donnellan, Lang, and Nikolajuk (2014) were unable to replicate the findings we obtained using a new variant of imagined contact (Birtel & Crisp, 2012). We commend the authors' careful and systematic study, but we argue that their conclusion goes substantially beyond what their design, data, or context can justify.…”

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confidence: 70%

Reducing Prejudice Through Mental Imagery

Crisp

Birtel

2014

Psychol Sci

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Imagined intergroup contact (Crisp & Turner, 2009) is a new indirect contact strategy for promoting tolerance and more positive intergroup relations. McDonald, Donnellan, Lang, and Nikolajuk (2014) were unable to replicate the findings we obtained using a new variant of imagined contact (Birtel & Crisp, 2012). We commend the authors' careful and systematic study, but we argue that their conclusion goes substantially beyond what their design, data, or context can justify. It overgeneralizes their finding to a field of more than 70 studies with multiple design variants and conceptual replications. Furthermore, the original study was designed not to test the efficacy of the basic imagined-contact effect, but rather to test the relative efficacy of different task variants. Therefore, we believe that it is more accurate to say that their study represents an important data point in efforts to identify moderators of imagined contact than to say that it provides data on the efficacy of the effect per se. We elaborate on these points and use this example to illustrate how direct replications and meta-analysis can be fruitfully combined to refine understanding of how imagined contact may most effectively reduce prejudice. Imagined Contact in ContextIn their article, McDonald et al. (2014) questioned whether treating prejudice with imagery is "easier said than done." However, one must be careful to not overgeneralize this single replication failure to an entire field of study. In fact, more than 70 studies have tested the hypothesis that imagery reduces prejudice. A recent meta-analysis of these studies (Miles & Crisp, 2014), which included 5,282 participants, revealed a robust moderate effect of imagined contact on a range of dependent variables (attitudes, emotions, intentions, and behavior) and with a range

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“Treating” Prejudice

Cited by 60 publications

References 37 publications

Imagined contact encourages prosocial behavior towards outgroup members

Imagined contact encourages prosocial behavior towards outgroup members

Positive and negative intergroup contact: Interaction not asymmetry

Reducing Prejudice Through Mental Imagery

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