Remembering the past, experiencing the present, and predicting the future: Social-cognitive perspectives on intergroup contact

One of the most robust interventions for reducing prejudice is intergroup contact. Whilst the affective processes involved in prejudice reduction via intergroup contact are becoming well understood, this thesis explores novel social-cognitive factors surrounding intergroup contact. Two strands of research explore how people look back at past contact and look forward to future interactions with unfamiliar group members. Experiments 1 to 4 examine how experiences of fluency in recalling past contact may influence people’s perceptions of their intergroup contact, and in turn influence outgroup attitudes and future contact intentions. Utilising two different paradigms in Chapter 2 and 3, no effect of the manipulation of contact retrieval fluency was found on any of the outcome variables. Potential reasons for this null-effect are discussed, including memory biases, inference processes regarding the contact-attitude relationship, and affective and normative components of prejudice. The second strand of research described in Chapter 4 and 5 moves focus from the past to the future, to examine generalisation of intergroup contact to trust behaviour towards novel group members. This process of member-to-member generalisation was examined within a Trust Game paradigm, where group membership and interaction valence were manipulated. Experiments 5 to 8 demonstrate that people use their experiences with group members to inform decisions to trust unknown individuals in the future. Member-to-member generalisation was enhanced for negative compared to positive experiences, but was particularly attuned to violations of previous group-based beliefs. Together, this thesis highlights the importance of social-cognitive processes involved in intergroup contact generalisation to attitudes and behaviour, and shows the potential of using laboratory-based behavioural measures to examine intergroup contact

Member-to-member generalisation in trust behaviour: How do prior experiences inform prosocial behaviour towards novel ingroup and outgroup members

Trust in individuals is strongly guided by group membership; ingroup favouritism in trust is a very robust finding in the literature on pro-social behaviour. We know, however, that group attitudes can change based on discrete encounters with group members (i.e., intergroup contact). This research examines how people use previous experiences with ingroup and outgroup members to inform decisions to trust novel, unknown group members. This process, which we refer to as member-to-member generalisation, was examined in two studies using a student sample (N = 135) and a larger and more representative online sample (N = 226). The moderating effects of group membership (ingroup vs outgroup vs unknown) and interaction valence (positive vs negative) on member-to-member generalisation were explored in ten sequential Trust Games. We examined changes in investment behaviour based on feedback from the previous partner, where feedback was either positive (high reciprocation) or negative (no reciprocation). We observed consistent evidence for member-to-member generalisation. People did not just rely on initial group attitudes to guide their trust behaviour, but adjusted their behaviour towards novel individuals based on previous experiences. Generalisation was stronger for interactions that were negative and seemingly unexpected. When people showed strong distrust of the outgroup (Study 1) or were highly identified with the ingroup (Study 2), they changed their behaviour towards novel partners more after experiencing incongruent interactions. These findings are discussed in relation to intergroup contact theory, outgroup homogeneity, and expectancy violation effects

Group-based biases influence learning about individual trustworthiness

People often have generalised expectations of trustworthiness about ingroup and outgroup members, based on previous direct and indirect experience with these groups. How do these prior biases interact with new experiences when learning about individual group members’ trustworthiness? These three studies are the first to examine the effect of group-level biases on learning about individuals’ trustworthiness. Participants from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom played iterated Trust Games with trustworthy and untrustworthy members of both ingroups and outgroups. We show that the influence of group membership on trust decisions depended on the valence of the interactions with individual group members. When interacting with trustworthy partners, people displayed outgroup favouritism throughout the game, investing higher in outgroup members than ingroup members. However, for untrustworthy partners, initial outgroup favouritism disappeared, and ingroup and outgroup members were equally distrusted by the end of the game. Our work suggests that when individual experience is integrated with group-based biases, group membership influences trust decisions over time, but mostly when experiences are positive. These findings are discussed in relation to complexity-extremity theory and previous work on learning in the Trust Game

Evidence of a dynamic association between intergroup contact and intercultural competence

Three studies explored the association between intergroup contact and intercultural competence. Study 1 and Study 2 provided evidence of a cross-sectional association between intergroup contact and intercultural competence in which positive contact was associated with increased intercultural competence and negative contact was associated with reductions in this outcome. In Study 3 longitudinal data allowed us to test the possibility of mutual influence between these variables whereby intercultural competence is not only a consequence of intergroup contact, but is also predictive of the quality of future intergroup contact. Results showed that positive contact was longitudinally associated with improvements in intercultural competence, and that higher intercultural competence was associated with a reduction in future negative contact. Findings speak to the importance of taking a dynamic outlook on contact effects. The beneficial consequences of positive contact may be the same variables capable of transforming future contact encounters and reducing the likelihood of negative interactions

Workshop Introduction to using R for Data Analysis in the Social Sciences

The materials for a workshop on using R for data analysis in the social sciences can be found in this project. This workshop was created for early-career researchers in the UK. It was held at the University of East Anglia as part of the advanced training program on the 12th of July 201

Study 1

The analysis scripts, and data sets of Study 1 of this project, conducted in the Netherlands