Positive and negative asymmetry of intergroup contact: A dynamic approach

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Although positive intergroup contact has been shown to reduce prejudice, negative contact has the potential to worsen intergroup relations. The efficacy of intergroup contact hence has policy implications for wider debates about diversity, multiculturalism, and social conflict; but doubt has recently been cast on its potential in applied settings because whilst contact can be positive (e.g., having outgroup friends) it can also be negative (e.g., being bullied by an ethnic outgroup member). Moreover, diverse settings (e.g., schools, neighbourhoods) could potentially have unintended consequences of actually increasing prejudice because they may expose people to greater frequency of both positive and negative contact (which may undermine positive effects of contact). Yet little is known about the combined effects of positive and negative contact, and the consequences for increasingly diverse nations and communities. Using a variety of different methodological approaches, and testing participants in UK, GER and NL (where in each case majority group members interact with a different set of minority groups) we test the claim that negative contact exerts stronger effects on various outcomes than positive contact. In a series of studies involving both ethnic majority and minority participants, and using different methodological paradigms (diary, experimental, longitudinal survey, and social network studies), we seek to test three hypotheses that emerge from a critical reading of the relevant literature: buffering (i.e., positive contact weakens any negative effect of negative contact), augmentation (i.e., negative contact augments the impact of positive contact, because it contrasts the positive with the negative contact), and poisoning (i.e., negative contact reduces the impact of positive contact) effects. Finally, we use the cumulative knowledge of the project to test and seek to improve a large-scale social intervention, which is premised on promoting positive contact, but that has ignored any possible role for negative contact. This research further examines how and when positive and negative contact have their joint effects. They may have their impact, for example, via category salience (when contact is negative, categories are more salient). And the effect of positive vs negative contact on category salience may be qualified by various 'psychological' and 'social' factors. Among key psychological moderators, we will explore the order in which positive and negative contact are experienced (are outcomes worse when initial contact is negative?), and the intensity and consistency of the (positive or negative; are outcomes worst when one instance of negative contact follows another?). Among more 'social' factors, we will explore the impact of social norms.