Reducing Intergroup Mistrust Through Contact?
In the conclusion to our book, we propose that recognition may reduce intergroup mistrust by promoting intergroup contact. For example, in Burundi, we noted that “the recognition regime also involves quota-based ethnic integration of major institutions,” which “increases intergroup contact and creates ties based on profession and political coalitions that cut across ethnicity” (p. 169). In a 2013 paper [link], we found that interethnic contact may have helped Tutsi soldiers in the integrated Burundian army to form trusting working relations with Hutu counterparts, although ethnic salience was not affected.
In this post, we discuss inter-group contact as a strategy to reduce interethnic mistrust. In particular, we talk about recent evidence and implications for further research about contact.
Recent field experiments have given us deeper insights into using contact to reduce mistrust in violence-affected settings. Alexandra Scacco and Shana Warren’s 2018 paper [link] studies an education program that increased contact between Muslim and Christian young men in violence-affected Kaduna, Nigeria. The program reduced discriminatory behavior in incentivized activities, but did not reduce prejudice. Salma Mousa’s 2020 paper [link] studies the effects of playing on mixed Muslim-Christian soccer teams in Iraq. The experience improved attitudes and behaviors within the soccer league, although improvements did not occur in social contexts outside the soccer league. Finally, ongoing research we are carrying out with Ruth Ditlmann and Nejla Asimovic [link] studies the effects of playing in a mixed Arab-Jewish youth basketball league in Israel. We find that the program works well to reduce prejudice and increase willingness to advocate for the outgroup for relatively high status groups (Jewish boys) but less so for others.
These findings raise two important questions for researchers studying contact and intergroup mistrust. First, we need to distinguish between the way a person feels about specific individuals versus about a group. As conventionally recounted, Allport’s classic “contact hypothesis” proposes that positive encounters with individuals from an outgroup will lead a person to generalize positively toward the outgroup as a whole. But clearly this doesn’t always happen. Suppose you encounter someone and all you know about them is that they are from an “outgroup.” Theories of statistical discrimination say it is natural to assume that traits common to a group likely apply to them as well. Your mistrust toward the outgroup would carry over to them. But then suppose you have a positive interaction with the person. You could conclude this person is okay, but they are an exception. Or you could generalize and change your mind about the entire outgroup. In what circumstances would the latter happen?
Then, even if contact causes individuals to change their minds more generally about an outgroup, this is rarely enough on its own to alter political dynamics, unless the individuals are elites (as was the case in our Burundi research). A paper with Ruth Ditlmann and Thomas Zeitzoff [link] spells out a variety of ways that effects of contact on non-elites might nonetheless translate into societal change. These include policing potential aggression by ingroup peers, publicly advocating for intergroup cooperation, or taking political action such as voting. In what situations, then, would the effects of contact extend to changing these kinds of behaviors?
The recent wave of studies has helped us define more nuanced questions about intergroup contact strategies. We look forward to future research that helps us understand how people change their minds about groups as a whole and how such changed understanding translates into political action.
