Negative intergroup contact is more influential, but positive intergroup contact is more common: Assessing contact prominence and contact prevalence in five Central European countries

By S. Graf, Stefania Paolini, Mark Rubin. 2014

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The present research tested the idea that the ecological impact of intergroup contact on outgroup attitudes can be fully understood only when relative frequency and relative influence of positive and negative contact are considered simultaneously. Participants from five European countries (Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and Slovakia; N = 1276) freely described their contact experiences with people of neighboring nationalities and then reported on their outgroup attitudes. Contact descriptions were coded for positive versus negative valence and for person versus situation framing. Consistently across the five participant groups, positive intergroup contact was reported to occur three times more frequently than negative intergroup contact; however, positive contact was found to be only weakly related to outgroup attitudes. On the contrary, the less frequent negative (vs. positive) contact was comparatively more influential in shaping outgroup attitudes, especially when negativity was reported around the contact person, rather than the contact situation. This research's findings reconcile contrasting lines of past research on intergroup contact and suggest that the greater prevalence of positive contact may compensate for the greater prominence of negative contact, thus leading to modest net improvements in outgroup attitudes after intergroup contact. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9228753d9fa62c2db39599232147594de2c5d166

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Citations in the corpus

The Single Factor Fallacy: Implications of Missing Critical Variables from an Analysis of Intergroup Contact Theory1 (2017, result): “In addition to the inconsistent findings across these studies, only the results of Barlow et al. (2012, Study 2), Graf et al. (2014) and Pettigrew and Tropp (2011) uncovered statistically significant differences between the effects of positive and negative contact on prejudice.”
Direct, extended, and mass-mediated contact with immigrants in Italy: their associations with emotions, prejudice, and humanity perceptions (2017, background): “…While some studies found that the effects of negative contact are stronger than the effects of positive contact (Aberson, 2015; Barlow et al., 2012; Graf, Paolini, and Rubin 2014), other studies found the opposite pattern (Pettigrew, 2008) and others did not find reliable differences in the…”
How do we get people into contact? Predictors of intergroup contact and drivers of contact seeking (2020, background): “Contact does not necessarily take positive courses (e.g., Árnadóttir et al., 2018; Graf et al., 2014; Paolini et al., 2010) and it would be interesting to see whether some predictors of intergroup contact are specific for positive intergroup contact while others are more strongly associated with…”
Does negative contact undermine attempts to improve intergroup relations? Deepening the understanding of negative contact and its consequences for intergroup contact research and interventions (2021, background): “We lastly provided an up-to-date review of the relative frequency of negative and positive intergroup contact and thereby demonstrated in line with previous research (Graf et al., 2014), that the larger frequency of positive compared to negative intergroup contact holds true in many settings.”
Positive and negative intergroup contact: Interaction not asymmetry (2018, result): “As we noted in the introduction, the results of prior research in this area have been mixed; several studies confirmed negative asymmetry (Barlow et al., 2012; Dhont & Van Hiel, 2009; Dhont et al., 2010;, Cornelis, & Van Hiel, 2010; Graf et al., 2014; Labianca et al., 1998; Paolini et al., 2010; Pao”
Seeking and avoiding intergroup contact: Future frontiers of research on building social integration (2018, background): “While negative contact might be relatively infrequent (Graf et al., 2014), there is some evidence that its adverse effects on intergroup attitudes and cognitions may be of greater magnitude than the beneficial effects produced by positive contact (Barlow et al.”
Whites for racial justice: How contact with Black Americans predicts support for collective action among White Americans (2018, result): “Consistent with prior research (Graf et al., 2014), participants reported greater positive contact (M = 5.”