ICRN's next Contaxt Colloqium
Join us for our next ICRN Colloquium featuring Prof Rose Meleady from the University of East Anglia who will present Stable People, Stable Contexts, Stable Attitudes? Contact Effects Reconsidered. Abstract: Intergroup contact is widely assumed to reduce prejudice by changing individuals over time. Yet recent research has raised questions about whether routine, everyday contact actually produces meaningful change within individuals. In our three-wave study of White Brits, contact predicted more positive attitudes toward outgroups only at the between-person level, and these links were explained by stable ideological dispositions (SDO, RWA) suggesting that the association is more trait-like, reflecting enduring differences between people rather than the effects of contact itself. But the absence of change may have as much to do with stable environments as with stable individuals. In two further studies tracking major “contact ruptures”—starting university and studying abroad—we observed sudden, sustained increases in contact that coincided with shifts in outgroup attitudes. I argue that focusing on substantial changes, rather than minor day-to-day variations better aligns with how contact effects were originally conceived of by Allport; contact is more likely to change attitudes when it changes substantially, rather than when it is routine. Date: Friday, 30 January Time: 12:00 GMT / 13:00 CET Discussant: Prof Shelley McKeown Jones, Oxford University Registration: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/3801a0a0-009a-4e1e-b0ad-a70d2e679918@7250d88b-4b68-4529-be44-d59a2d8a6f94