Longitudinal effects of contact on intergroup relations: The role of majority and minority group membership and intergroup emotions

By Loris Vezzali, D. Giovannini, D. Capozza. 2010

102 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A field study was conducted in the Italian context to examine the longitudinal effects of contact on improved intergroup relations, and to test whether the effects were different for majority and minority group members. Furthermore, we examined the processes underlying contact effects. Participants were 68 Italian (majority) and 31 immigrant (minority) secondary school students, who completed a questionnaire at two time points. The results of regression analyses showed that, consistent with the contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954), quantity and quality of contact longitudinally improved outgroup evaluation and increased the attribution of positive stereotypes to the outgroup; the reverse paths were non-significant. Notably, whereas quantity of contact improved intergroup attitudes and stereotypes for both majority and minority participants, quality of contact had reliable effects only for the majority group. Intergroup anxiety and empathy mediated the longitudinal effects of quantity of contact for both Italians and immigrants; the cross-lagged effects of contact quality on criterion variables for the Italian group were mediated by intergroup empathy. The theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/53390c5c1feb093ca281aedbdd3b9c299d68c199

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Citations in the corpus

The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice (2015, unknown): “…taking can stem from experiences of intergroup contact and are, after intergroup anxiety (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008), the most potent mediators of contact effects (e.g., Capozza, Vezzali, Triﬁletti, Falvo, & Favara, 2010; Swart, Hewstone, Christ, & Voci, 2011; Vezzali, Giovannini, & Capozza, 2010).”
Intergroup Anxiety (2014, background): “Correspondingly, low levels of intergroup anxiety are associated with positive stereotypes (Vezzali et al., 2010).”
What determines attitudes to immigration in European countries? An analysis at the regional level (2013, background): “Higher concentrations of minority groups in prosperous areas, high status of natives and less segregated neighbourhoods lead to more positive relations (Branton and Jones 2005) while high concentrations of minorities in troubled and poor areas foster feelings of threat and increase conflict (Verkuyt”