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Changing attitudes through intergroup contact: the effects of group membership salience
Author(s) -
Brown Rupert,
Vivian James,
Hewstone Miles
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-0992(199908/09)29:5/6<741::aid-ejsp972>3.0.co;2-8
Subject(s) - outgroup , psychology , social psychology , salience (neuroscience) , ingroups and outgroups , contact theory , in group favoritism , generalization , developmental psychology , social identity theory , social group , cognitive psychology , structural engineering , engineering , mathematical analysis , mathematics
Two studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that heightened membership salience, achieved by increasing the prototypicality of particular outgroup members during cooperative intergroup contact, facilitates the generalization of positive attitudes toward the outgroup as a whole. The first study ( N =64) utilized an experimental paradigm in which the perceived typicality of a target outgroup member and the perceived homogeneity of the outgroup as a whole were manipulated. Consistent with our hypothesis, results indicated that positive attitudinal generalization was facilitated by encounters with typical outgroup members. The effects of membership prototypicality were further examined in a second study ( N =293) where a survey was administered in six European Community countries. Results supported the hypothesis that membership salience moderates the impact of contact on a generalized measure of favourable orientation towards another country. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.