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Intergroup contact is widely recognized as one of the most validated methods of improving attitudes toward out-groups. Yet what is intergroup contact “good for” beyond this function? To answer this question we take a panoramic view of the literature, beginning with the recognition that contact is multifaceted in both form (e.g., face-to-face, indirect, simulated) and outcome (e.g., attitudes, cognition, behavior). Taking this highly inclusive view of what contact is and what contact does suggests that it plays a fundamental role in the shaping of human cognition. An increasingly diverse body of research demonstrates that contact exerts a generalizing reaction across target out-groups, making respondents less inward looking and more open to experiences. Contact shapes ideology regarding how the world ought to operate (i.e., ideologies about social hierarchy or regulation); over time, it can promote new ways of problem-solving, enhance cognitive flexibility, and foster creativity. For these reasons, we believe that contact is a key liberalizing agent that shapes human cognition and experience; consequently, contact theory should now share the stage with other prominent theories (e.g., cognitive dissonance) that speak to a broader understanding of human nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imagined intergroup contact (Crisp & Turner, 2009) is a new indirect contact strategy for promoting tolerance and more positive intergroup relations. Despite its relatively recent inception, there have now been over 70 studies showing that imagining a positive interaction with an outgroup member can reduce prejudice and encourage positive intergroup behavior. With this meta-analysis, we provide the first quantitative review of imagined contact effects on four key measures of intergroup bias: attitudes, emotions, intentions, and behavior. We also test for moderators arising from both group and study design characteristics. The analysis found that imagined contact resulted in significantly reduced intergroup bias across all four dependent variables (overall d+ = 0.35). The effect was significant for both published and unpublished studies, and emerged across a broad range of target outgroups and contexts. The effect was equally strong for explicit and implicit attitude measures, but was stronger on behavioral intentions than on attitudes, supporting the direct link between imagery and action proposedly underlying mental simulation effects. Most design characteristics had no significant impact, including valence of the imagined interaction, type of control condition, and time spent imagining contact. However, the more participants were instructed to elaborate on the context within which the imagined interaction took place, the stronger the effect. The imagined contact effect was also stronger for children than for adults, supporting the proposition that imagined contact is a potentially key component of educational strategies aiming to promote positive social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imagined intergroup contact (Crisp & Turner, 2009) is a new indirect contact strategy for promoting tolerance and more positive intergroup attitudes. We asked whether the positive effects of imagined contact are contingent upon characteristics that define the experience of intergroup relations. Specifically, we tested whether precontact intergroup anxiety makes imagining contact more cognitively effortful, and if it does, whether this detracts from its effectiveness. In two studies participants were asked to either imagine contact with an outgroup member or a control scene. We found that imagining contact counteracted the negative impact of intergroup anxiety on outgroup communicative behavior. Furthermore, performance on an ostensibly unrelated Stroop task revealed that this compensatory benefit requires cognitive resources proportional to the level of precontact anxiety. We conclude that the detrimental impacts of intergroup anxiety can be assuaged by imagining contact, but that doing so requires the allocation of attentional resources proportional to the positivity of preintervention contact experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent research has demonstrated that mentally simulating positive intergroup encounters can promote tolerance and more positive intergroup attitudes. We explored the attributional processes underlying these effects. In our study participants who imagined intergroup contact subsequently reported greater intentions to engage in future contact, a relationship that was mediated by participants’ attribution, to themselves, of a more positive attitudinal orientation towards outgroup contact. Consistent with this attributional account, the perspective taken when imagining the encounter qualified this effect. Participants who imagined the encounter from a third-person perspective reported heightened intentions to engage in future contact relative to control participants, while this was not the case when the encounter was imagined from a first-person perspective. These findings suggest that attributional processes are key to observing the benefits that accrue from imagining intergroup contact. We speculate that these attributions may distinguish the approach from extended and actual forms of contact and help researchers to further capitalize on the benefits of mental imagery for improving intergroup relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Recent studies have shown that imagining intergroup contact can improve attitudes held toward a range of social groups. We extended research on imagined contact by testing an elaborated task variant designed specifically to enhance future contact intentions. In three experiments imagined contact heightened intentions, elaborated imagery enhanced this effect, and these enhancements were attributable to both reduced intergroup anxiety and an increase in the reported vividness of the imagined scenario. Furthermore, prior contact enhanced the vividness with which imagined scenarios were envisaged, with concurrent benefits for future contact intentions. Results also supported the notion that elaboration creates a more accessible contact script upon which to base future judgments of intention. We discuss the implications of these findings for a developing model of imagined contact effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on social categorization. One's ability to deal with inconsistencies is significant in maintaining coherent representations of others. It is well established that dealing with inconsistent information in impression formation is cognitively effortful. Moreover, it is now unclear how such processes of impression formation interact when one is dealing with surprising category combinations. One possibility that researchers raise is that surprising combinations trigger a process of inconsistency resolution.

Recent work developing interventions designed to reduce intergroup bias has sometimes yielded disparate findings. We tested whether the varying effectiveness of such interventions may have a motivational basis. In two experiments we examined whether differential ingroup identification moderated the effectiveness of a differentiation-reducing intervention strategy. In Experiment 1, thinking of characteristics shared between the ingroup and outgroup reduced ingroup favoritism to a greater extent for lower identifiers than for higher identifiers. In Experiment 2 we replicated this finding with different target groups and evaluative measures while controlling for information load. We discuss the implications of this work for developing social psychological models of bias-reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors comments on the article "Treating prejudice with imagery: Easier said than done?" by M. M. MacDonald , M. B. Donnellan, R. Lang, and K. Nikolajuk. They said that McDonald et al., were not able to replicate the results that they attained using a variant of imagined contact. They argue that MacDonald et al.'s results go substantially beyond what their design, data, or context can support.

A growing body of research has shown that imagined intergroup contact can improve outgroup attitudes. The aim of the present study was to examine the effectiveness of a multifaceted form of imagined contact in counteracting bullying in school children, and additionally to test the underlying processes of this effect. Two hundred and fifteen Italian elementary school children took part in a 3-week intervention, where they were asked to imagine a scenario in which they become friends with an unknown disabled child, interact in various social settings, and react to forms of discrimination toward the newly acquired friend. After each session, they discussed collectively what they had imagined. The dependent measures were administered 1 week after the last session. Results revealed that inclusion of an outgroup member in the self mediated the effect of imagined contact on intentions to counteract social exclusion and bullying of disabled children, as well as helping intentions. Imagined contact also promoted greater willingness for outgroup contact via more positive outgroup attitudes and empathy. Our findings are important in delineating new forms of imagined contact, and understanding ways to promote behaviors that defend victims of social exclusion and bullying in school environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large body of research points to differences in the communal orientation of people from a lower and higher socio-economic status (SES) background. However, direct evidence for differences in communal attitudes remains scant. In this pre-registered report, we test the hypothesis that SES impacts the incentive value of cues associated with bonding and social relations, thereby fostering differences in implicit and explicit communal attitudes. We further speculate that for people at the low end of the SES spectrum, the prevalence of discrimination, exclusion, and conflict means that relationships may have less of an incentive value. Thus, we hypothesise that the association between SES and communal attitudes follows a curvilinear trajectory and peaks at medium levels of SES. Testing these predictions in a dataset derived from the Attitudes, Identities, and Individual Differences (AIID) Study (Hussey, Hughes, & Nosek, 2018), we found no evidence supporting a linear or a curvilinear association between SES and communal attitudes. Instead, implicit and explicit communal attitudes did not vary across the SES spectrum. We discuss the implications of these findings and avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]