An Experimental Test Of Extended Contact Hypothesis: Its Boundary Conditions And Psychological Processes

Abstract

The extended contact hypothesis states that contact with an ingroup member, who has an outgroup friend, facilitates favorable outgroup attitudes (Wright, Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe, & Ropp, 1997). An experimental manipulation examined the hypothesis' assumption that ingroup identity salience facilitates extended contact effectiveness, the effect of national ingroup identity strength as a moderator of extended contact, and the hypothesized mediators of extended contact in the context of U.S. citizens' evaluations toward Arab immigrants in the United States, compared to Latino and European immigrants. Ninety, White females (Mean age = 21.33) were randomly assigned to conditions of extended contact with an ingroup partner or an outgroup partner group member. Manipulation checks, evaluations, and mediators were measured via a postexperimental survey. Participants completed a money-allocation task to measure behavior toward the outgroups. Quality contact was the strongest predictor of evaluations toward the Arab outgroup in all analyses. Extended contact predicted favorable attitudes toward the Arab target outgroup (p = < .05), controlling for quality contact. The hypothesized interaction between contact condition and partner group membership was not significant, suggesting that extended contact influenced evaluations regardless of a shared ingroup membership. There was no significant moderation effect of national identity, and there were no significant indirect effects of the mediators. Within-group comparisons revealed more positive attitudes toward the European target group overall, marginal effects for extended contact on attitudes toward the Arab target group, and a significant change in attitudes from a preexperimental to a postexperimental questionnaire toward Arab immigrants in the United States in the ingroup partner membership condition.