Intergroup contact has been shown to reduce discrimination towards several derogated social outgroups. In this paper, we examined the application of indirect contact to the reduction of bias towards male homosexuals. Specifically, we used social media to induce a situation in which participants engaged in contact with the media profile of a sexual outgroup member. In the first study, we manipulated whether the online profiles were consistent or inconsistent with social stereotypes towards gay men and examined the relation between outgroup stereotype consistency and entitativity, which may be a mediating variable between contact and bias reduction. We found that viewing stereotype consistent media profiles of sexual outgroup members might lead to perceptions that these sexual outgroup members were less entitative. In the second study, we used the same stimuli to examine the relation between outgroup stereotype consistency and implicit attitudes and affect towards sexual outgroup members. However, we found that there is no significant interaction between outgroup stereotype consistency and implicit attitudes and affect towards outgroups. Therefore, our studies show that outgroup stereotype consistency might be a manipulator of entitativity, but outgroup stereotype consistency does not change individuals’ implicit affect or attitude towards outgroup members. Future studies may further investigate methods other than social media that may alter implicit attitudes and affect towards outgroups.
Key word: stereotype, consistency, entitativity, sexual minorit
