Disentangling the role of different forms of contact: Effects on intergroup emotions, prejudice and outgroup humanization.

According to the Contact Hypothesis, positive encounters with outgroup members have the potential of reducing prejudice toward the whole outgroup (Allport, 1954). Research has widely demonstrated the effectiveness of contact in ameliorating intergroup relations across a variety of situations and cultural contexts (Brown & Hewstone, 2005; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006); research has further shown that positive contact reduces, besides blatant prejudice, also subtle and implicit forms of prejudice. Recent developments of the Contact Hypothesis investigated the mediators of the contact-reduced prejudice relationship. The recent meta-analysis by Pettigrew and Tropp (2008) underlined that affective mediators, such as reduced intergroup anxiety and increased empathy, have stronger effects than cognitive mediators, such as outgroup knowledge. In four correlational studies, we explored the relationship between different forms of contact and prejudice toward immigrants in Italy. Concerning the mediators of the relationship between contact and prejudice, we considered the affective mediators identified by Pettigrew and Tropp (2008): intergroup anxiety, namely the anticipation of negative psychological or behavioral consequences deriving from intergroup interactions (Stephan & Stephan, 1985), and emotional empathy, namely an other-oriented emotional response, congruent with the perception of her/his welfare (Batson et al., 1997). Besides empathy and anxiety, we considered a more recently proposed mediator, namely outgroup trust. Trust consists in positive expectations about intentions and behaviors of other persons or groups (Kramer & Carnevale, 2001), and is associated to positive attitudes and cooperative behaviors with outgroup members. As regards prejudice, we considered both explicit attitudes toward immigrants, and more indirect prejudice measures, i.e. subtle prejudice and a scale measuring the percentage of crimes in Italy attributed to immigrants. Recent theoretical approaches further studied a very subtle form of prejudice, that consists in attributing more secondary emotions and uniquely human traits to ingroup than to outgroup members (infrahumanization; Leyens, Demoulin, Vaes, Gaunt, & Paladino, 2007). Thus, we also considered humanity attributions to ingroup and outgroup members and hypothesized, consistently with empirical evidence (Brown, Eller, Leeds, & Stace, 2007; Capozza, Trifiletti, Vezzali, & Favara, 2012), that positive intergroup contact could increase the attribution of uniquely human characteristics to outgroup members. In the first study, 174 Italian participants completed a questionnaire including: measures of quantity of meaningful contact with immigrants (Voci & Hewstone, 2003); measures of attitude toward immigrants (Voci & Hewstone, 2003), subtle prejudice (adapted from Pettigrew & Meertens, 1995), attribution of uniquely human and non uniquely human traits to ingroup and outgroup members (Capozza, et al., 2012), estimate of the percentage of crimes in Italy committed by immigrants (Pagotto, Voci, & Maculan, 2010); as emotional processes, measures of intergroup anxiety (adapted from Stephan & Stephan, 1985), emotional empathy (based on Batson et al., 1997), and outgroup trust (Voci, 2006). We used Structural Equation Modelling with latent variables (Lisrel, Jöreskog & Sörbom, 2004) to test the effects of contact; in the model, quantity of contact was the predictor; empathy, anxiety, and trust were the mediators, and attitudes, prejudice, crimes rating, and uniquely human traits attributed to immigrants were the criterion variables. Contact with immigrants led, through reduced intergroup anxiety and increased empathy and trust, to the reduction of prejudice and crimes estimate, to the improvement of outgroup attitudes and to greater attribution of uniquely human traits to immigrants. The first study thus confirmed that meaningful direct contact with outgroup members reduced various forms of prejudice, through affective mediators. Anyway, direct contact with outgroup members is not always attainable and frequent; in highly segregated settings, indeed, people belonging to different groups may not have the chance to develop deep relationships with outgroup members; moreover, even when contact is possible, people may seek friendships among ingroup members, and not form cross-group friendships (see, e.g., Stearns, Buchmann, & Bonneau, 2009). In these situations, indirect forms of contact may have important effects on intergroup attitudes. Wright, Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe and Ropp (1997) proposed that extended contact, namely the knowledge that an ingroup member has an outgroup friend, may reduce prejudice toward the whole outgroup. Experimental and correlational studies demonstrated that extended contact is effective for prejudice reduction toward various outgroups, and has significant effects controlling for direct contact (Turner, Hewstone, Voci, Paolini, & Christ, 2007). Research has also shown that observing cross-group interactions through mass media may affect prejudice and intergroup relationships. Mutz and Goldman (2010), in their review of the effects of exposure to mass media on prejudice, underlined that mass media are the main source of information about outgroups. In Study 2, thus, we investigated, besides direct contact effects, also the effects of extended contact with immigrants and of contact through mass media. Concerning contact through mass media, we chose to consider separately contact through TV news and newspapers and contact through movies and TV series. In the second study, 201 Italian participants completed a questionnaire containing, besides measures included in the questionnaire of Study 1, measures of extended contact (Wright et al., 1997; Turner, Hewstone, Voci, & Vonofakou, 2008), contact through TV news and newspapers, and contact through movies and TV series. We tested a regression model with latent variables; predictors were quantity of the four forms of contact (direct contact, extended contact, contact through TV news and newspapers, contact through movies and TV series); mediators and outcome variables were the same of the model tested in Study 1. Confirming results of Study 1, direct contact ameliorated attitudes, enhanced the attribution of uniquely human traits to immigrants, and reduced prejudice and crimes estimate, through the reduction of intergroup anxiety and the increase of empathy and trust. Extended contact ameliorated outgroup attitudes and reduced prejudice through outgroup trust. Contact through TV news and newspapers instead increased all forms of prejudice, partially via increased intergroup anxiety. Finally, contact through movies and TV series had a positive direct effect on the attribution of uniquely human traits to immigrants. Thus, Study 2 showed that direct contact, extended contact, and contact through movies and TV series were related to lower prejudice, while contact through TV news and newspapers increased prejudice. Recent meta-analysis and theorizations on intergroup contact (Pettigrew, 2008; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006) underlined the lack of research on the negative episodes of contact, and on comparing the effects of positive and negative contact. Indeed, in most of the published studies, contact measures concerned quantity and quality of contact, and quantity of cross-group friendships; through these procedures, it would not be possible to analyze the role of contact episodes perceived as positive or negative. In the third study, thus, we considered the distinction between positive and negative episodes of the contact forms analyzed in Study 2. Participants were 330 Italian adults and students, who completed a questionnaire containing, besides the prejudice and emotions measures included in the questionnaires of the previous studies, measures of quantity of positive and negative episodes of direct contact with immigrants, quantity of positive and negative episodes of extended contact with immigrants, quantity of positive and negative episodes of contact through TV news and newspapers, quantity of positive and negative episodes of contact through movies and TV series. Preliminary analyses showed that positive direct contact episodes were more frequent than negative ones; we found the same pattern for extended contact and contact through movies and TV series, while negative episodes of contact through TV news and newspapers were far more frequent than positive ones. We tested a regression model with latent variables, where predictors were quantity of positive and negative episodes of the above mentioned forms of contact (eight predictors); mediators were intergroup anxiety, trust, and empathy; the outcome variables were attitudes, subtle prejudice, crimes rating, and uniquely human traits attributed to immigrants. The contact forms which were most influent on prejudice reduction were positive direct contact and positive extended contact; they decreased all the forms of prejudice, and the mediation involved the three emotions (reduced intergroup anxiety, increased empathy and trust). Also contact through TV news and newspapers was very influential: positive contact through TV news and newspapers ameliorated attitudes and increased outgroup humanization, while the negative episodes were related to stronger prejudice, influencing all the outcome measures. It is noteworthy that positive direct contact was related to reduced prejudice more than negative direct contact was related to increased prejudice; the same pattern emerged for extended contact and for contact through movies and TV series, while negative contact through TV news and newspapers was a stronger predictor of prejudice than positive contact through TV news and newspapers of reduced prejudice. In the fourth study we considered, besides variables included in the questionnaire of the third study, implicit attitudes toward immigrants. Participants were 197 Italian adults and students, who completed an online questionnaire, containing the same measures of the questionnaire used in Study 3, followed by a Single Category IAT (SC-IAT, Karpinski & Steinman, 2006). In the SC-IAT score, higher values reflected more positive implicit attitudes; mean score of the SC-IAT was negative, indicating negative implicit attitudes. We applied regression analysis, to test the effects of the contact measures on prejudice indexes. Positive direct contact, positive extended contact, and positive contact through movies and TV series were strong predictors of reduced explicit prejudice; positive direct contact and positive contact through movies were also weakly related to better implicit outgroup attitudes. Negative direct contact and negative contact through TV news were instead related to worse explicit outgroup attitudes. As in Study 3, positive direct contact, positive extended contact, and positive contact through movies and TV series were more influential, respectively, than negative direct contact, negative extended contact, and negative contact through movies and TV series; concerning contact through TV news and newspapers, instead, the negative episodes increased prejudice more than the positive episodes reduced prejudice. Taken together, results of the four studies showed that: 1. All the contact forms we considered (direct contact, extended contact, contact through TV news and newspapers, contact through movies and TV series) have significant effects on prejudice and on intergroup attitudes. The most influent form of contact is direct contact. 2. It is useful to consider separately positive and negative episodes of contact, which have independent effects. 3. Direct contact and extended contact are usually positive, and the positive episodes of these forms of contact have stronger effects on prejudice reduction, compared to the effects of negative episodes on increased prejudice. 4. To improve the relationships between Italians and immigrants, it could be useful to favor meaningful direct contact, given then, when direct contact occurs, positive episodes are more frequent and more influential than negative episodes. 5. Also programs basing on extended contact could be effective: it would thus be useful to favor social networks with individuals belonging to various outgroups; moreover, programs basing on reading romances or tales portraying cross-group friendships could be implemented in schools. 6. Contact through TV news and newspapers is usually negative; only for this contact form, negative episodes are more influential than positive episodes. It would thus be useful to provide guidelines to mass media, to avoid that the conveyed information increase prejudice toward immigrants. 7. Contact through movies and TV series is generally positive, and is mainly related to the perception of immigrants as fully human, and to better implicit attitudes toward immigrants.Secondo l’ipotesi del contatto, incontri positivi con membri di un gruppo estraneo riducono il pregiudizio verso l’intero gruppo (Allport, 1954). La ricerca ha ampiamente dimostrato l’efficacia del contatto nel migliorare le relazioni intergruppi in una grande varietà di situazioni e contesti culturali (Brown & Hewstone, 2005; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006); ha inoltre dimostrato che il contatto positivo non solo migliora gli atteggiamenti espliciti verso i gruppi esterni, ma riduce anche forme più sottili e implicite di pregiudizio. Recenti sviluppi dell’ipotesi del contatto hanno indagato i mediatori del contatto, ovvero attraverso quali processi il contatto riduce il pregiudizio. La recente meta-analisi di Pettigrew e Tropp (2008) ha evidenziato che i mediatori affettivi, come riduzione dell’ansia intergruppi ed aumento dell’empatia, hanno effetti più forti dei mediatori cognitivi, come la conoscenza dell’outgroup. In quattro studi correlazionali, abbiamo esplorato la relazione tra diverse forme di contatto ed il pregiudizio verso gli immigrati in Italia. Per quanto riguarda i mediatori della relazione tra contatto e riduzione del pregiudizio, abbiamo considerato i mediatori affettivi identificati da Pettigrew e Tropp (2008): l’ansia intergruppi, ovvero i sentimenti di disagio dovuti all’anticipazione dell’interazione con membri dell’outgroup (Stephan & Stephan, 1985), e l’empatia emotiva, ovvero la risposta emotiva orientata verso l’altro, congruente con la percezione del suo benessere (Batson et al., 1997). Oltre ad empatia ed ansia, abbiamo considerato un mediatore proposto più recentemente, ovvero la fiducia verso l’outgroup. La fiducia consiste nelle aspettative positive riguardo le intenzioni e il comportamento di altre persone o altri gruppi (Kramer & Carnevale, 2001), ed è associata ad atteggiamenti positivi e comportamenti cooperativi con l’outgroup. Come misure di pregiudizio, abbiamo considerato sia l’atteggiamento esplicito verso gli immigrati, sia misure più indirette di pregiudizio, ovvero il pregiudizio sottile ed una scala che misura la percentuale di crimini attribuita agli immigrati. Recenti approcci teorici hanno inoltre studiato una forma molto sottile di pregiudizio, che consiste nell’attribuire ai membri dell’outgroup meno emozioni secondarie e meno caratteristiche unicamente umane che ai membri dell’ingroup (infraumanizzazione; Leyens, Demoulin, Vaes, Gaunt, & Paladino, 2007). Abbiamo quindi considerato anche le percezioni di umanità dell’ingroup e dell’outgroup, ipotizzando, coerentemente con alcune evidenze empiriche (Brown, Eller, Leeds, & Stace, 2007; Capozza, Trifiletti, Vezzali, & Favara, 2012), che il contatto intergruppi positivo potesse aumentare la percezione dell’outgroup come definito da caratteristiche unicamente umane. Nel primo studio, a 174 partecipanti italiani è stato somministrato un questionario contenente misure di quantità del contatto approfondito con immigrati (Voci & Hewstone, 2003); misure di atteggiamento verso l’outgroup (Voci & Hewstone, 2003), pregiudizio sottile (adattamento della scala di Pettigrew & Meertens, 1995), attribuzione di tratti unicamente umani e non unicamente umani all’ingroup e all’outgroup (Capozza, et al., 2012), stima dei crimini commessi da immigrati (Pagotto, Voci, & Maculan, 2010); come processi emotivi legati al contatto, misure di ansia intergruppi (adattamento della scala di Stephan & Stephan, 1985), empatia emotiva (item adattati da Batson et al., 1997) e fiducia verso l’outgroup (Voci, 2006). Abbiamo applicato Modelli di Equazioni Strutturali con variabili latenti (Lisrel, Jöreskog & Sörbom, 2004) per verificare gli effetti del contatto; nel modello, la quantità del contatto era la variabile iniziale, empatia, ansia e fiducia erano i mediatori, e atteggiamento, pregiudizio, stima dei reati commessi dagli immigrati e tratti unicamente umani attribuiti all’outgroup erano le variabili finali. Il contatto con membri del gruppo esterno portava, attraverso la riduzione dell’ansia intergruppi e l’aumento di fiducia ed empatia, alla riduzione del pregiudizio sottile e della stima di reati commessi da immigrati, al miglioramento dell’atteggiamento e a una maggiore attribuzione di tratti unicamente umani agli immigrati. Il primo studio ha quindi confermato che il contatto diretto approfondito con membri dell’outgroup riduceva varie forme di pregiudizio, attraverso mediatori affettivi. Il contatto diretto con membri del gruppo esterno però non è sempre possibile e frequente; in contesti caratterizzati da forte segregazione, infatti, persone che appartengono a gruppi diversi potrebbero non avere occasione di sviluppare conoscenze approfondite; inoltre, anche in casi in cui il contatto è possibile, le persone potrebbero cercare amicizie all’interno dei membri del proprio gruppo, e non avere amici che fanno parte dell’outgroup (si veda, per esempio, Stearns, Buchmann, & Bonneau, 2009). In queste situazioni, forme indirette di contatto possono avere importanti effetti sugli atteggiamenti intergruppi. Wright, Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe e Ropp (1997) hanno proposto che anche il contatto esteso, ovvero la conoscenza che un membro dell’ingroup ha un amico che è un membro dell’outgroup, possa ridurre il pregiudizio verso l’intero outgroup. Ricerche sperimentali e correlazionali hanno dimostrato che il contatto esteso è efficace nella riduzione del pregiudizio verso vari outgroup, e che ha effetti significativi anche considerando simultaneamente gli effetti del contatto diretto (Turner, Hewstone, Voci, Paolini, & Christ, 2007). Recenti teorizzazioni hanno proposto che anche osservare interazioni intergruppi attraverso i mass media possa influenzare il pregiudizio e i rapporti intergruppi. Mutz e Goldman (2010), nella loro review sugli effetti sul pregiudizio dell’esposizione ai mass media, hanno sottolineato che i mass media sono la principale fonte di informazioni degli individui per formarsi impressioni sugli outgroup. Nel secondo studio abbiamo quindi indagato, oltre agli effetti del contatto diretto, anche gli effetti del contatto esteso con gli immigrati e del contatto attraverso i mass media. Per quanto riguarda il contatto attraverso i mass media, abbiamo scelto di considerare separatamente il contatto attraverso telegiornali e quotidiani ed il contatto attraverso film e fiction. Nello specifico, a 201 partecipanti italiani è stato somministrato un questionario, in cui erano inserite, oltre alle misure del questionario dello Studio 1, misure di contatto esteso (Wright et al., 1997, Turner, Hewstone, Voci, & Vonofakou, 2008), di contatto attraverso telegiornali e quotidiani, e di contatto attraverso film, telefilm e fiction. È stato verificato un modello di mediazione con variabili latenti, in cui le variabili iniziali erano i punteggi relativi alla quantità delle quattro forme di contatto (contatto diretto, contatto esteso, contatto attraverso telegiornali e quotidiani, contatto attraverso film e fiction); i mediatori e le variabili finali erano gli stessi del modello verificato nello Studio 1. Confermando i risultati dello Studio 1, il contatto diretto migliorava l’atteggiamento, aumentava l’attribuzione di tratti unicamente umani e diminuiva pregiudizio e stima dei reati, attraverso la mediazione delle tre emozioni verso l’outgroup (diminuzione dell’ansia, aumento di empatia e fiducia). Il contatto esteso migliorava gli atteggiamenti e diminuiva il pregiudizio attraverso la mediazione della fiducia. Il contatto attraverso notiziari e giornali invece aumentava tutte le forme di pregiudizio considerate, in parte attraverso la mediazione dell’ansia. Il contatto attraverso film e fiction, infine, aumentava l’attribuzione di tratti unicamente umani all’outgroup. La Studio 2 ha quindi dimostrato che il contatto diretto, il contatto esteso e il contatto attraverso film e fiction diminuivano il pregiudizio, mentre il contatto attraverso notiziari e giornali lo aumentava. Recenti meta-analisi e teorizzazioni sul contatto intergruppi (Pettigrew, 2008; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006) hanno evidenziato la mancanza di ricerca sugli episodi negativi di contatto, e sul confronto tra gli effetti del contatto positivo e del contatto negativo. Nella maggior parte degli studi presenti in letteratura, infatti, le misure di contatto intergruppi riguardano quantità e qualità del contatto, o quantità di amicizie intergruppi; tramite tali procedure, risulta difficile analizzare il ruolo di episodi di contatto vissuti come positivi e di episodi di contatto vissuti come negativi. Nel terzo studio abbiamo quindi considerato la distinzione tra gli episodi positivi e negativi delle varie forme di contatto incluse nel secondo studio. A 330 partecipanti italiani è stato somministrato un questionario contenente, oltre alle misure di emozioni e di pregiudizio inserite nei ques