Investigating the role of E‐contact and self‐disclosure on improving Turkish‐Kurdish interethnic relations

Advancing E-contact to Reduce Intergroup Anxiety and Increase Positive Attitudes Towards Individuals Who Identify as Bisexual

Bisexual individuals are invisible sexual minorities, who face prejudice and "double discrimination" from both heterosexual and sexual minority communities. Despite this, little empirical research has examined bisexual prejudice reduction. To address this, the current study tested an E-contact intervention - a highly structured, text-based, online interaction tool - to reduce bisexual prejudice. Heterosexual participants (N = 170) were randomly allocated to an intergroup (E-contact) or intragroup (control) interaction, with either a male or female interaction partner. Findings indicated that intergroup E-contact resulted in less intergroup anxiety compared to an intragroup interaction, and that this effect was more pronounced when the bisexual interaction partner was male for heterosexual men, but not for heterosexual women. Although E-contact had no direct effect on tolerance toward bisexual individuals or the perceived stability of bisexuality as a sexual orientation, findings revealed that reduced intergroup anxiety mediated the effect of E-contact on these outcome variables. This result was found in the intergroup dynamic of heterosexual men interacting with bisexual men, providing an important experimental demonstration of the potential for harnessing an E-contact intervention to reduce affective prejudice toward bisexual individuals.

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.

Intergroup Dialogues in the Landscape of Digital Societies: How Does the Dialogical Self Affect Intercultural Relations in Online Contexts?

The effects of intergroup dialogues on intercultural relations in digital societies and the growing conflict, inflammatory and hate speech phenomena characterizing these environments are receiving increasing attention in socio-psychological studies. Based on Allport’s contact theory, scholars have shown that online intercultural contact reduces ethnic prejudice and discrimination, although it is not yet clear when and how this occurs. By analyzing the role of the Dialogical Self in online intercultural dialogues, we aim to understand how individuals position themselves and others at three levels of inclusiveness—personal, social, and human—and how this process is associated with attitudes towards the interlocutor, intergroup bias and prejudice, whilst also considering the inclusion of the Other in the Self and ethnic/racial identity. An experimental procedure was administered via the Qualtrics platform, and data were collected among 118 undergraduate Italian students through an anonymous questionnaire. From ANOVA and moderation analysis, it emerged that the social level of inclusiveness was positively associated with ethnic/racial identity and intergroup bias. Furthermore, the human level of inclusiveness was associated with the inclusion of the Other in the Self and ethnic/racial identity, and unexpectedly, also with intergroup bias. We conclude that when people interact online as “human beings”, the positive effect of online dialogue fails, hindering the differentiation processes necessary to define one’s own and the interlocutor’s identities. We discuss the effects of intercultural dialogue in the landscape of digital societies and the relevance of our findings for theory, research and practice.