Intergroup contact refers to interactions between individuals from different social groups. In school settings, this often involves students engaging with peers from diverse ethnic or racial backgrounds.
Fostering positive intergroup contact in educational environments is considered crucial for promoting social harmony, reducing prejudice, and preparing young people to navigate an increasingly diverse society.
Zingora, T. (2023). On the spurious effect of intergroup friendship on outgroup attitudes in schools: The role of social influence and the positive impact of exposure to outgroup peers. British Journal of Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12797
Key Points
- The meta-analysis of SAOM studies confirms there is no significant association between intergroup friendship and outgroup attitudes in schools.
- Social influence from friends’ attitudes, rather than intergroup friendship itself, is responsible for the seeming link between having outgroup friends and positive outgroup attitudes. When not accounting for social influence, intergroup friendship appears to improve attitudes.
- Exposure to outgroup peers, regardless of friendship, is positively associated with outgroup attitudes. This holds true even when controlling for negative contact experiences.
- The research suggests segregation in schools may hinder the development of positive outgroup attitudes, as exposure to outgroup peers is beneficial.
Rationale
Intergroup contact, especially intergroup friendship, is widely regarded as an effective strategy for reducing prejudice and improving outgroup attitudes (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006).
Many interventions aim to foster intergroup friendships, particularly in school settings, but their effects can be weak (Paluck et al., 2018).
Recent studies using stochastic actor-oriented modelling (SAOM), a social network analysis approach, have surprisingly found no significant effect of intergroup friendship on outgroup attitudes (Bracegirdle et al., 2022; Zingora et al., 2019).
These findings point to gaps in our understanding of how and when intergroup contact shapes attitudes, and call for further investigation using methods like SAOM that can account for the complex, dynamic nature of peer relationships and attitude formation (Wölfer & Hewstone, 2017).
The present research aims to clarify the puzzling SAOM results and explore whether exposure to outgroup peers, beyond close friendships, may impact outgroup attitudes.
Method
The research consists of two preregistered studies.
Study 1 is a meta-analysis following PRISMA-P guidelines. The meta-analysis included studies that:
- measured intergroup friendship (participants’ nominations of friends from a different social group)
- assessed prejudice, bias, or attitudes towards outgroups
- used SAOM for analysis
- were published in English
The initial search in Scopus using keywords like “prejudice,” “SAOM,” “intergroup contact,” etc. yielded few eligible studies.
The search was expanded using ResearchRabbit software, ultimately identifying 7 studies with 9 relevant tests of intergroup friendship and outgroup attitudes.
All were conducted in schools. Effect sizes and potential moderators were coded.
A random effects model was used for analysis, with study and dataset identifiers as random factors.
Study 2 used longitudinal social network data from 2700 adolescents across 29 school grades in Germany (Leszczensky et al., 2020).
SAOM was applied to investigate the effects of intergroup friendship, homophily (preference for similar others), social influence, and exposure to outgroup peers on students’ attitudes towards Turks and Poles, the two largest minority groups.
Five models were evaluated for each target outgroup to test different hypotheses.
Results
The meta-analysis revealed compelling evidence that intergroup friendship alone does not significantly improve outgroup attitudes when properly controlling for other factors.
Across nine longitudinal tests involving approximately 10,000 students, only one test showed a positive effect, and even in that case, the same study found no effect on a second outcome measure.
The subsequent SAOM analysis provided crucial insight into why previous research may have overestimated friendship effects.
When controlling for social influence mechanisms, the relationship between intergroup friendship and attitude improvement disappeared.
However, when social influence controls were removed, significant positive effects emerged, suggesting that previous research may have attributed to friendship what was actually an effect of social influence.
Importantly, the study found that mere exposure to outgroup peers consistently showed positive effects on attitudes, even without direct friendship formation.
These patterns held true across different ethnic groups studied (both Turks and Poles), indicating the robustness of the findings.
Insight
This research fundamentally challenges long-held assumptions about the necessity of intergroup friendship for improving intergroup attitudes.
The findings suggest that the social influence processes within peer networks, rather than friendship itself, drive attitude changes.
This insight opens new pathways for intervention, suggesting that creating opportunities for exposure and interaction, even without close friendship formation, may be sufficient for improving intergroup attitudes.
The research demonstrates the importance of considering the broader social context in which intergroup contact occurs, rather than focusing solely on individual friendships.
Future research should examine how different positions within social networks affect attitude formation and how influence patterns flow through these networks.
This could lead to more effective intervention strategies that leverage natural social influence processes rather than trying to engineer specific friendships.
Strengths
This study had several methodological strengths, including:
- Methodological rigor through its multi-method approach, combining a systematic meta-analysis with original longitudinal research.
- The large sample size of 2,700 students across multiple schools provides strong statistical power, while the longitudinal design allows for tracking attitude changes over time.
- The use of advanced SAOM statistical methods enables sophisticated analysis of complex social networks and influence patterns.
- The inclusion of multiple ethnic groups and the successful replication of findings across different target groups (Turks and Poles) strengthens the generalizability of the results.
- The pre-registration of both studies enhances their credibility by demonstrating pre-planned analyses and reducing potential researcher bias.
Limitations
This study also had several methodological limitations, including:
- The focus on German schools raises questions about generalizability to other cultural contexts and educational systems.
- The reliance on self-report measures may introduce social desirability bias, particularly given the sensitive nature of intergroup attitudes.
- Despite the longitudinal design, establishing definitive causality remains challenging due to the complexity of social influence processes.
- The study’s focus on specific ethnic groups (Turks and Poles) may not capture the full range of intergroup dynamics present in increasingly diverse societies.
- The time constraints of the study period may not capture longer-term attitude changes that develop over extended periods.
Implications
This research has significant implications for how we approach prejudice reduction in educational settings.
It suggests that current interventions focusing heavily on fostering intergroup friendships may be misguided or inefficient.
Instead, schools might achieve better results by creating integrated environments that maximize exposure between groups, even without explicitly pushing for friendship formation.
The findings highlight the crucial role of social influence in attitude formation, suggesting that interventions should consider how to leverage existing peer networks and influence patterns.
This could lead to more organic and potentially more effective approaches to improving intergroup relations.
The research also has broader implications for school integration policies, suggesting that structural approaches ensuring regular intergroup contact might be more effective than programs targeting individual relationships.
These insights open new directions for prejudice reduction programs that work with, rather than against, natural social processes.
References
Primary reference
Zingora, T. (2023). On the spurious effect of intergroup friendship on outgroup attitudes in schools: The role of social influence and the positive impact of exposure to outgroup peers. British Journal of Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12797
Other references
Bracegirdle, C., Reimer, N. K., van Zalk, M., Hewstone, M., & Wölfer, R. (2022). Disentangling contact and socialization effects on outgroup attitudes in diverse friendship networks. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 122(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000240
Paluck, E. L., Green, S. A., & Green, D. P. (2018). The contact hypothesis re-evaluated. Behavioural Public Policy, 3, 129–158. https://doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2018.25
Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 751–783. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.90.5.751
Wölfer, R., & Hewstone, M. (2017). Beyond the dyadic perspective: 10 reasons for using social network analysis in intergroup contact research. British Journal of Social Psychology, 56(3), 609–617. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12195
Zingora, T., & Graf, S. (2019). Marry who you love: Intergroup contact with gay people and another stigmatized minority is related to voting on the restriction of gay rights through threat. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 49(11), 684–703. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12627
Keep Learning
- How might the social influence dynamics observed here apply to other forms of prejudice beyond ethnic/racial attitudes (e.g., based on gender, sexuality, disability, etc.)? What similarities and differences would you expect?
- The study highlights the benefits of exposure to outgroup peers in schools. But what factors might moderate this effect? When could diverse environments fail to improve or even worsen intergroup attitudes?
- Imagine you are designing a school-based intervention to promote positive intergroup attitudes using insights from this research. What key elements would you include and why? How would you assess whether it is working?
- The author notes that majority and minority students’ intergroup experiences and attitude change processes may differ. What role do you think power and status asymmetries play in shaping social influence flows in diverse settings?
- This work looked at adolescents’ friendships and attitudes. How do you think the patterns might shift in adulthood or professional contexts? What additional factors might come into play?
- The meta-analysis found very few SAOM studies on this topic so far. What other social psychological phenomena could benefit from a social network analysis approach? What new insights might this perspective reveal?
