Positive and negative asymmetry of intergroup contact: A dynamic approach

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.

The most obvious beneficiaries of the research are academics. The areas of intergroup contact and of diversity - and indeed their intersection - have become growth areas in the social sciences, particularly for the disciplines of social psychology, sociology and political science. Indeed, the UK PI (Professor Miles Hewstone) has contributed via peer-reviewed journal articles, keynote lectures, and workshops at conferences, as well as departmental seminars in universities, in each of these three disciplines, and his work is highly cited across these disciplines. This area of research really is social science, and does not belong to any one discipline. Traditionally, sociology and political science have tended to look to social psychology for experimental evidence, but more recently they also appear to have been influenced by the complementary ways social psychologists analyse survey data (e.g., exploring mediating and moderating processes). Only slightly less obvious are the stakeholders. At the time of applying for the ORA grant we obtained letters of support from the following organizations/individuals: Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG); Equality & Diversity Forum (EDF), Runnymede Trust (RT); The Challenge (TC; one of the largest charities in the UK focused on building social contact between people of different backgrounds to promote trust, including running the intervention which will be evaluated as part of the current grant); Ted Cantle (author of the Cantle Report), and Trevor Phillips (for Chair of CRE and EHRC). A range of Government Departments and agencies now draw on this work (e.g., DCLG and DfE). They are particularly keen to learn the implications of the new analysis of both positive and negative contact for their work on diverse communities and schools; see the letter of support for the original ORA grant written by Miriam Light at DCLG: "Evidence which helps us to understand 'what works' in promoting positive relations between groups is therefore of great interest and relevance to us. Within the proposed research project, we are especially interested in understanding more about the effect of negative contact and whether/how this may vary between population groups." Stakeholders require, and will demand, timely dissemination of the new work, and its presentation in non-technical form at both policy round-tables and in briefing papers. The PI has a strong track record of doing this. Finally, there is great interest beyond government, among policy researchers in Think Tanks. The PI has been a regular presenter of his work in the past, in oral and written form, and been asked to return in the future to report on this new work (IPPR and Demos).