Everyday encounters not enough to soften prejudice

Regular and positive experiences are no longer enough to reduce prejudice between different racial, religious or social groups, a University of Queensland-led study has found.

Dr Alexander O’Donnell from UQ’s Institute of Social Science Research said the long-standing idea that everyday encounters between different groups of people will slowly change hearts and attitudes has been challenged by the new research.

“For decades we’ve trusted that simply bringing together people from different groups in society would reduce prejudice,” Dr O’Donnell said.

“But this doesn’t appear to be what happens in the real world.

“First of all, people seem pretty set in their ways – they either have lots or few or even no friends from different groups and then stick to it.

"Very few people change their social groups dramatically.

“In addition, while people’s attitudes do improve or get worse, this appears to have little to do with whether or not they make a new friend or meet someone from a new group.”

American psychologist Gordon Allport introduced the ‘intergroup contact hypothesis’ in 1954, the year the US Supreme Court banned segregation in American schools.

“The idea was that by removing government-initiated segregation, positive encounters between black and white Americans would naturally reduce racial prejudice,” Dr O’Donnell said.

“That’s exactly what happened, and we saw some of the most dramatic social shifts relative to human development over the past 60 years.”

Study co-author Professor Fiona Barlow from UQ’s School of Psychology said this research analysed 14 longitudinal tests of Allport’s contact hypothesis from New Zealand, Germany and the Netherlands, between 2009-2017.

“The studies involved adults and adolescents and their attitudes towards refugees as well as different racial and ethnic groups,” Professor Barlow said.

“The fact that different one-on-one encounters between members of different groups didn’t correspond to reduced prejudice presents a serious challenge to the prevailing ideas about how we can create a more tolerant society.”

On the other hand, Dr O’Donnell said it was heartening that across all 14 studies the most prejudicial groups were the smallest, while the individuals with the lowest prejudice had the highest levels of social interactions.

“But the findings sound an alarm bell about increased polarisation in contemporary society,” he said.

“With a 24-hour news cycle, social media and filtered online feeds our lives are often socially segregated, and the media may be having a larger impact on our attitudes than what we experience in person.

“It’s worrying to think that this long-held tenet of social psychology is no longer supported by research and efforts to promote social cohesion using this technique will likely fail.”

Dr O’Donnell said alleviating prejudice would require a substantial commitment of finances and time from multiple stakeholders.

“Multicultural countries like Australia need to identify strategies that cut through the growing divides between people,” he said.

The research is published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.