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Replicating and Extending : Contact Predicts No Within-Person Longitudinal Outgroup-Bias Change

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Gordon Hodson
Gordon Hodson
Gordon Hodson
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Rose Meleady at University of East Anglia
Rose Meleady
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Abstract

Intergroup contact has long been touted as a premier means to reduce prejudice and forge positive bonds with outgroups. Given its origins in psychological research, it is perhaps of little surprise that contact is expected to induce change within people over time. Yet using random-intercepts crossed-lagged modeling that parses within-person from between-person effects, Sengupta et al. (2023) recently found no evidence of within-person change, only unexplained between-person effects, regarding contact’s effects on outgroup solidarity in New Zealand. We conceptually replicated their study, focusing on modern racism and an affect thermometer as the outcomes, in a three-wave study of White British participants (NT1 = 946, NT2 = 667, NT3 = 591) and their attitudes toward foreigners. We replicated the general pattern described by Sengupta and colleagues, confirming between-person effects without within-person effects, suggestive of third-variable explanations. As a novel finding, we discover that differences in social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) can account for the observed between-person effects. Problematically for contact theory, contact effects, at least those relying on self-reported accounts, increasingly appear to reflect differences between people (person factors) rather than being context-driven (situation factors)—such that those lower (vs. higher) in SDO and RWA are more favorable toward outgroups, rather than intergroup contact bringing about positive outcomes itself. Implications for theory development and intervention are discussed.
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Replicating and Extending Sengupta et al. (2023):
Contact Predicts No Within-Person Longitudinal Outgroup-Bias Change
Gordon Hodson
1
and Rose Meleady
2
1
Department of Psychology, Brock University
2
School of Psychology, University of East Anglia
Intergroup contact has long been touted as a premier means to reduce prejudice and forge
positive bonds with outgroups. Given its origins in psychological research, it is perhaps of
little surprise that contact is expected to induce change within people over time. Yet using
random-intercepts crossed-lagged modeling that parses within-person from between-person
effects, Sengupta et al. (2023) recently found no evidence of within-person change, only
unexplained between-person effects, regarding contact’s effects on outgroup solidarity in
New Zealand. We conceptually replicated their study, focusing on modern racism and
an affect thermometer as the outcomes, in a three-wave study of White British participants
(N
T1
=946, N
T2
=667, N
T3
=591) and their attitudes toward foreigners. We replicated the
general pattern described by Sengupta and colleagues, confirming between-person effects
without within-person effects, suggestive of third-variable explanations. As a novel finding,
we discover that differences in social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing
authoritarianism (RWA) can account for the observed between-person effects. Problemati-
cally for contact theory, contact effects, at least those relying on self-reported accounts,
increasingly appear to reflect differences between people (person factors) rather than being
context-driven (situation factors)—such that those lower (vs. higher) in SDO and RWA are
more favorable toward outgroups, rather than intergroup contact bringing about positive
outcomes itself. Implications for theory development and intervention are discussed.
Public Significance Statement
Bringing different groups together holds promise in reducing outgroup biases. Yet here we
replicate Sengupta et al. (2023),finding no evidence that contact induces within-person
changes. Rather, low-bias expression seems characteristic of preexisting between-person
differences in social dominance orientation and authoritarianism.
Keywords: contact, longitudinal, within-person change, prejudice
Supplemental materials: https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001210.supp
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This article was published Online First November 13, 2023.
Gordon Hodson https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9699-9098
Rose Meleady https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4671-4960
This research was supported by a research fellowship to Rose Meleady
from the Leverhulme Trust (RF-2019-263). There are no known conflicts of
interest on the part of the authors.
Gordon Hodson played a lead role in writing–review and editing and an
equal role in conceptualization, investigation, methodology, validation, and
writing–original draft.Rose Meleady played a lead rolein data curation,formal
analysis, funding acquisition, project administration, resources, software, and
visualization and an equal role in conceptualization, investigation,
methodology, validation, and writing–original draft.
Data, questionnaire items, and variable codes are available on the
Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/3vduc/?view_only=892ec86f13
e347f3a5ecfcd3cb6dd275.
The data are available at https://osf.io/3vduc/?view_only=892ec86f13
e347f3a5ecfcd3cb6dd275.
The experimental materials are available at https://osf.io/3vduc/?
view_only=892ec86f13e347f3a5ecfcd3cb6dd275.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Gordon
Hodson, Department of Psychology, Brock University, 1812 Sir Isaac Brock
Way, St. Catharines, ON L2S 3A1, Canada. Email: ghodson@brocku.ca
American Psychologist
© 2023 American Psychological Association 2024, Vol. 79, No. 3, 451–462
ISSN: 0003-066X https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001210
451
... A large proportion of the evidence for the benefits of intergroup contact, however, comes either from cross-sectional studies that cannot establish causality or from longitudinal studies that do not clearly separate between-person variance (differences between individuals over time) from within-person variance (changes in individual values over time). Recent analyses using statistical techniques have found limited evidence of within-person reduction of prejudice following within-person increases in intergroup contact (Friehs et al. 2024;Hodson and Meleady 2024). Commentators have posited several reasons as to why this might be the case. ...
... Substantial evidence shows that intergroup contact entails positive outcomes in different forms and amongst different groups (e.g., Paluck, Green, and Green 2019;Pettigrew and Tropp 2006). Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, intergroup contact principles are often applied to promote social cohesion-related outcomes in divided societies, including through education and other could be 'third variable' explanations such that those who are more likely to hold negative attitudes due to individual difference factors are less likely to engage in contact (Hodson and Meleady 2024). Another is the idea that the impact of contact experiences on prejudice diminishes as they become more common for an individual over time (Friehs et al. 2024;Wölfer et al. 2016). ...
... Recent analyses using a new statistical technique capable of separating within-person variance from between-person variance-the 'random intercept cross-lagged panel model' (RI-CLPM)-have yielded significant between-person negative associations between contact and prejudice, but no evidence of within-person change of prejudice following within-person change of contact (Friehs et al. 2024;Hodson and Meleady 2024). These findings are incongruent with mainstream thinking about contact as a process capable of producing changes within people over time in the form of lower prejudice. ...
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