Ethnic minorities' racial attitudes and contact experiences with white people

Intergroup Contact and Prejudice Reduction: Prospects and Challenges in Changing Youth Attitudes

Intergroup contact has long been lauded as a key intervention to reduce prejudice and improve intergroup attitudes among youth. In this review, we summarize classic perspectives and new developments in the intergroup contact literature, highlighting both prospects and challenges associated with achieving desired youth outcomes through contact. First, we review literature showing how positive intergroup outcomes can be facilitated through cultivating optimal conditions for contact, as well as by attending to youth’s emotional responses to contact. We then discuss how desired contact outcomes may be inhibited by limited understanding of ways in which contact strategies may affect youth across developmental stages, as well as by limited focus on societal inequalities and intergroup conflict, which require examination of outcomes beyond prejudice reduction. We also review growing bodies of research on indirect contact strategies—such as extended contact, vicarious contact, and online contact—showing many options that can be used to promote positive relations among youth from diverse backgrounds, beyond the contact literature’s traditional focus on face-to-face interaction. We conclude this review by acknowledging how understanding both prospects and challenges associated with implementing contact strategies can enhance our capacity to prepare youth to embrace group differences and build more inclusive societies.

The intergroup sensitivity effect among racial groups in the United States

The intergroup sensitivity effect (ISE) refers to individuals responding more negatively to criticism directed toward their ingroup if the criticism is delivered by someone outside the group. The ISE has never been examined for groups defined by race. In light of ongoing racial tensions in America, the purpose of the current research was to examine whether the ISE replicates among racial groups. Study 1 replicated the ISE among African American, European American, and Latinx American university students and, unexpectedly, found that European American participants responded more positively to praise delivered by a racial outgroup member. Study 2 replicated these results in a nonstudent sample and identified motivation to respond without prejudice as a moderator of the praise effect. In both studies, the ISE was mediated by perceptions of comment legitimacy/constructiveness but was not moderated by feelings toward the outgroup. Future directions and explanations for the praise effect are discussed.

How Contact Experiences Shape Welcoming: Perspectives from U.S.-Born and Immigrant Groups

This research examines how intergroup contact experiences—including both their frequency and their qualities (friendly, discriminatory)—predict indicators of welcoming among U.S.-born and immigrant groups. Analyzing a new survey of U.S.-born groups (whites and blacks) and immigrant groups (Mexicans and Indians) from the Atlanta and Philadelphia metropolitan areas (total N = 2,006), we examine welcoming as a key dimension of social integration. Along with reporting their contact experiences, survey respondents indicated the extent to which they are inclined to welcome and feel welcomed by each of the other groups. Results consistently demonstrated that greater contact frequency predicted greater tendencies to welcome and feel welcomed by each of the other groups. These effects persisted even when demographic characteristics, perceived discrimination, and exposure are included as predictors in the models. Findings also suggested that racial and nativity hierarchies shape how perceived discrimination predicts welcoming others and feeling welcomed by others.

‘Flying While Muslim’: Citizenship and Misrecognition in the Airport

Contemporary analyses of citizenship emphasise the importance of being able to occupy public space in a manner that does not compromise one’s sense of self. Moreover, they foreground individuals’ active engagement with others (e.g., being concerned about others) and the active exercise of one’s rights. We explore such issues through considering the psychological and social significance of having one’s various self-definitions mis-recognised in everyday social interactions. We do so through reporting interview and focus group data obtained from Scottish Muslims concerning their experience of surveillance at airports. Focussing on their accounts of how they orient to others’ assumptions about Muslim passengers, we consider what this means for our participants’ ability to act on terms that they recognise as their own and for their citizenship behaviours. Our analysis is organised in two sections. First, we examine the strategies people use to avoid painful encounters inside the airport. These include changes in micro-behaviours designed to avert contact, and where this was not possible, identity performances that are, in various ways, inauthentic. Second, we examine citizenship-related activities and how these may be curtailed in the airport. These include activities that entail the individual reaching out and making positive connections with others (e.g., through helping others) and exercising the right to criticise and complain about one’s treatment. Our analyses highlight the psychological and social consequence of identity misrecognition, and how this impacts on individuals’ abilities to act in terms of their own valued identifications and enact citizenship behaviours.

Two strikes: race and the disciplining of young students

There are large racial disparities in school discipline in the United States, which, for Black students, not only contribute to school failure but also can lay a path toward incarceration. Although the disparities have been well documented, the psychological mechanisms underlying them are unclear. In two experiments, we tested the hypothesis that such disparities are, in part, driven by racial stereotypes that can lead teachers to escalate their negative responses to Black students over the course of multiple interpersonal (e.g., teacher-to-student) encounters. More generally, we argue that race not only can influence how perceivers interpret a specific behavior, but also can enhance perceivers' detection of behavioral patterns across time. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical benefits of employing this novel approach to stereotyping across a range of real-world settings.

Feeling like a group after a natural disaster: Common ingroup identity and relations with outgroup victims among majority and minority young children

We conducted a field study to test whether the common ingroup identity model (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000, reducing intergroup bias: The common ingroup identity model. Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press) could be a useful tool to improve intergroup relations in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Participants were majority (Italian) and minority (immigrant) elementary school children (N = 517) living in the area struck by powerful earthquakes in May 2012. Results revealed that, among majority children, the perceived external threat represented by the earthquake was associated with greater perceptions of belonging to a common ingroup including both ingroup and outgroup. In turn, heightened one-group perceptions were associated with greater willingness to meet and help outgroup victims, both directly and indirectly via more positive outgroup attitudes. Among immigrant children, perceived disaster threat was not associated with any of the dependent variables; one-group perceptions were positively associated with outgroup attitudes, helping and contact intentions towards outgroup victims. Thus, one-group perceptions after a natural disaster may promote more positive and supporting relations between the majority and the minority group. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.

Racial attitudes, physician-patient talk time ratio, and adherence in racially discordant medical interactions

Physician racial bias and patient perceived discrimination have each been found to influence perceptions of and feelings about racially discordant medical interactions. However, to our knowledge, no studies have examined how they may simultaneously influence the dynamics of these interactions. This study examined how (a) non-Black primary care physicians' explicit and implicit racial bias and (b) Black patients' perceived past discrimination affected physician-patient talk time ratio (i.e., the ratio of physician to patient talk time) during medical interactions and the relationship between this ratio and patients' subsequent adherence. We conducted a secondary analysis of self-report and video-recorded data from a prior study of clinical interactions between 112 low-income, Black patients and their 14 non-Black physicians at a primary care clinic in the Midwestern United States between June, 2006 and February, 2008. Overall, physicians talked more than patients; however, both physician bias and patient perceived past discrimination affected physician-patient talk time ratio. Non-Black physicians with higher levels of implicit, but not explicit, racial bias had larger physician-patient talk time ratios than did physicians with lower levels of implicit bias, indicating that physicians with more negative implicit racial attitudes talked more than physicians with less negative racial attitudes. Additionally, Black patients with higher levels of perceived discrimination had smaller physician-patient talk time ratios, indicating that patients with more negative racial attitudes talked more than patients with less negative racial attitudes. Finally, smaller physician-patient talk time ratios were associated with less patient subsequent adherence, indicating that patients who talked more during the racially discordant medical interactions were less likely to adhere subsequently. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in the context of factors that affect the dynamics of racially discordant medical interactions.

Acculturation Expectations and Experiences as Predictors of Ethnic Migrants’ Psychological Well-Being

There is a need for a better acknowledgement of the pre- and postmigration factors that influence postmigration psychological adaptation of ethnic migrants. In the present study, first, we examined the effects of pre-acculturative stress, anticipated sociocultural difficulties, and anticipated discrimination on ethnic migrants’ ( N = 153) psychological well-being in the postmigration stage. These pre-migration factors were expected to influence postmigration acculturation experiences (i.e., perceived acculturative stress, sociocultural difficulties, and discrimination), which, in turn, were expected to be decisive for postmigration well-being. Second, we examined how the concordance between these premigration and postmigration factors affects postmigration well-being. According to the first set of results, (1) the effect of anticipated sociocultural difficulties on psychological adaptation is mediated by perceived sociocultural difficulties and acculturative stress in the postmigration stage, and (2) the effects of pre-acculturative stress and anticipated discrimination are present in terms of their impact on subsequent postmigration experiences (stress and discrimination, respectively), which are further associated with postmigration well-being. The second set of results, in turn, shows that ethnic migrants’ psychological adaptation is highest (1) when both anticipated and perceived sociocultural difficulties are low and correspond with each other (but not when they anticipated more sociocultural difficulties than they experienced after migration), (2) when they both anticipate and perceive low levels of ethnic discrimination, and (3) when their perceived acculturative stress after migration is lower than pre-acculturative stress. The implications of the results for premigration interventions are discussed.

Anticipated and Perceived Intergroup Relations as Predictors of Immigrants’ Identification Patterns

The present study among Ingrian-Finnish remigrants (N = 153) from Russia to Finland examined the effects of anticipated discrimination in the pre-migration stage on the way intergroup relations are perceived and multiple cultural identities are formed in the post-migration stage. First, the results indicated that anticipated discrimination in the pre-migration stage affected perceived discrimination, permeability of group boundaries, and group status legitimacy in the post-migration stage. Second, anticipated discrimination in the pre-migration stage was not directly associated with any of the identities in the post-migration stage, but it was indirectly associated with national identification, via perceived discrimination and permeability of group boundaries. Perceived discrimination and impermeability of group boundaries in the post-migration stage were associated with lower levels of remigrants’ national (Finnish) identification in the new homeland. Third, the perceived legitimacy of Ingrian-Finns’ low status was associated with increased Russian minority identification. The findings extend previous research on the effects of anticipated intergroup contact on actual intergroup encounters on the one hand, and on the effects of perceived discrimination, status legitimacy, and permeability of group boundaries on national and ethnic identification among immigrants, on the other.

Development of ethnic, racial, and national prejudice in childhood and adolescence: a multinational meta-analysis of age differences

This meta-analysis summarizes 113 research reports worldwide (121 cross-sectional and 7 longitudinal studies) on age differences in ethnic, racial, or national prejudice among children and adolescents. Overall, results indicated a peak in prejudice in middle childhood (5-7 years) followed by a slight decrease until late childhood (8-10 years). In addition to differences for the various operationalizations of prejudice, detailed findings revealed different age-related changes in prejudice toward higher versus lower status out-groups and positive effects of contact opportunities with the out-group on prejudice development. Results confirm that prejudice changes systematically with age during childhood but that no developmental trend is found in adolescence, indicating the stronger influence of the social context on prejudice with increasing age.

Cross-group friendships and intergroup attitudes: a meta-analytic review

This work identifies how cross-group friendships are conceptualized and measured in intergroup research, investigates which operationalizations yield the strongest effects on intergroup attitudes, explores potential moderators, and discusses the theoretical importance of the findings. Prior meta-analyses have provided initial evidence that cross-group friendships are especially powerful forms of intergroup contact. Although studies of cross-group friendship have grown considerably in recent years, varied assessments leave us without a clear understanding of how different operationalizations affect relationships between friendship and attitudes. With a greatly expanded database of relevant studies, the authors compared friendship-attitude associations across a wide range of specific conceptualizations. Time spent and self-disclosure with outgroup friends yielded significantly greater associations with attitudes than other friendship measures, suggesting that attitudes are most likely to improve when cross-group friendships involve behavioral engagement. Processes underlying cross-group friendships are discussed, as are implications for future research and application.

Interactions in Black and White: Racial differences and similarities in response to interracial interactions

The current work examined Black and White people’s expectancies for interracial interactions. Across two studies, we found that Black people, compared to White people, had more positive past interracial contact, which statistically explained Black compared to White people’s greater self-efficacy for interracial interactions. This self-efficacy, in turn, contributed to less of a desire to avoid future interracial interactions (Study 2) and partially accounted for race differences in actual amounts of subsequent interracial contact (Study 1). However, Black participants also had heightened concerns about being the target of bias in interracial interactions, which contributed to responses to imagined future interactions. These findings suggest that cultural experiences affect individuals’ expectancies for interracial interactions and that these expectancies, in turn, have consequences for the quality and quantity of interracial contact.

Interracial and intraracial contact, school-level diversity, and change in racial identity status among African American adolescents

Among 224 African American adolescents (mean age=14), the associations between interracial and intraracial contact and school-level diversity on changes in racial identity over a 3-year period were examined. Youths were determined to be diffused, foreclosed, moratorium, or achieved, and change or stability in identity status was examined. Contact with Black students, Black friends, and White friends predicted change in identity status. Furthermore, in racially diverse schools, having more Black friends was associated with identity stability. Students reporting low contact with Black students in racially diverse schools were more likely to report identity change if they had few Black friends. In students reporting high contact with Blacks in predominantly White schools, their identity was less likely to change for students with fewer White friends.

Interracial and intraracial contact, school-level diversity, and change in racial identity status among African American adolescents

Among 224 African American adolescents (mean age=14), the associations between interracial and intraracial contact and school-level diversity on changes in racial identity over a 3-year period were examined. Youths were determined to be diffused, foreclosed, moratorium, or achieved, and change or stability in identity status was examined. Contact with Black students, Black friends, and White friends predicted change in identity status. Furthermore, in racially diverse schools, having more Black friends was associated with identity stability. Students reporting low contact with Black students in racially diverse schools were more likely to report identity change if they had few Black friends. In students reporting high contact with Blacks in predominantly White schools, their identity was less likely to change for students with fewer White friends.

Concerns about appearing prejudiced: Implications for anxiety during daily interracial interactions

We investigated the relationship between Whites’ and ethnic minorities’ concerns about appearing prejudiced and anxiety during daily interracial interactions. College roommate pairs completed an individual difference measure of concerns about appearing prejudiced at the beginning of the semester. Then they completed measures of anxiety and perceptions of their roommates’ anxiety-related behaviors for 15 days. Results indicated that among interracial roommate pairs, Whites’ and ethnic minorities’ concerns about appearing prejudiced were related to their self-reported anxiety on a daily basis; but this was not the case among same-race roommate pairs. In addition, among interracial roommate pairs, roommates who were concerned about appearing prejudiced began to “leak” their anxiety towards the end of the diary period, as indicated by their out-group roommate who perceived their anxious behaviors as increasing across time, and who consequently liked them less. The implications of these findings for intergroup relations are discussed in this article.

School and neighborhood contexts, perceptions of racial discrimination, and psychological well-being among African American adolescents

The present study examined contextual influences on the relationship between racial discrimination (individual, cultural, and collective/institutional) and psychological well-being. Two hundred and fifty two African American adolescents (46% male and 54% female, average age = 16) completed measures of racial discrimination, self-esteem, depressive symptoms and life satisfaction. Archival information regarding the racial/ethnic composition of the participants' neighborhoods and schools was used and increased school diversity was linked to increased perceptions of cultural discrimination. Regardless of school and neighborhood diversity, high perceptions of collective/institutional discrimination were linked to lower self-esteem for students in high diversity settings. Further, high levels of collective/institutional discrimination were associated with lower life satisfaction for African American youth in low diversity settings.