Close cross-community friendships best promote reconciliation, and segregated schooling sustains division.

Evidence

Inter-group contact has a key role to play in promoting reconciliation in Northern Ireland. This contact will be most effective in the form of close friendships with members of the other community, but indirect forms of contact are also effective. Segregation in education will sustain division in society unless interventions such as SEP become widespread, providing each child with the opportunity to meet pupils from the other community. — Miles Hewstone and Joanne Hughes, Reconciliation in Northern Ireland, 26

Inter-group contact has a key role to play in promoting reconciliation in Northern Ireland. This contact will be most effective in the form of close friendships with members of the other community, but indirect forms of contact are also effective. Segregation in education will sustain division in society unless interventions such as SEP become widespread, providing each child with the opportunity to meet pupils from the other community. — Miles Hewstone and Joanne Hughes, Reconciliation in Northern Ireland, 26

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Speaks to the reader’s question of whether contact reverses entrenched glorification — this asserts the positive-contact route exists in a post-conflict setting, relevant as a foil for the glorification-tipping-point question.
• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s stated purpose: compares whether positive contact de-escalates the dissenter/core dialectic in Northern Ireland versus mutating antagonism — this is the strongest causal claim in the chapter. — connects to: Cross-group friendship is the most effective intergroup contact form for reconciliation. — Miles Hewstone and Joanne Hughes, Reconciliation in Northern Ireland: the…, 5; Cross-group friendships reduce prejudice partly by lowering intergroup anxiety. — Miles Hewstone and Joanne Hughes, Reconciliation in Northern Ireland: the…, 11; Cross-group friendship especially reduces prejudice through intimacy and equal-status contact. — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 98 (+7 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Miles Hewstone and Joanne Hughes, Reconciliation in Northern Ireland: the…, 26

Related

• Cross-group friendship is the most effective intergroup contact form for reconciliation. (similarity 0.93)
• Cross-group friendships cause later intergroup trust, not the reverse. (similarity 0.90)
• Cross-group friendships reduce prejudice partly by lowering intergroup anxiety. (similarity 0.85)
• Cross-group friendship especially reduces prejudice through intimacy and equal-status contact. (similarity 0.82)
• Cross-group friendship shapes positive intergroup attitudes more than casual contact does. (similarity 0.82)
• Miles Hewstone and Joanne Hughes — Reconciliation in Northern Ireland the value of inter-group contact (similarity 0.81)
• Intergroup contact most strongly and reliably predicts willingness to mix with the outgroup (similarity 0.81)
• Student-body mixing drives cross-group attitudes, not school type (similarity 0.81)
• Intergroup contact is an established general mechanism for reducing prejudice across group types. (similarity 0.80)
• Equal-status, purposeful, community-sanctioned contact best reduces prejudice. (similarity 0.80)
• Mere knowledge that ingroup peers befriend outgroup members improves intergroup attitudes (similarity 0.79)
• Cooperative learning increases intergroup friendships while competition reduces them. (similarity 0.79)
• Outgroup friendship contact correlates with forgiveness, trust, and perspective-taking across both religious groups (similarity 0.79)
• Contact reduces hostility even amid conflict and heavy segregation, mainly affectively. (similarity 0.78)
• Demographic controls do not explain intergroup contact effects on reconciliation. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Cross-group friendships reduce prejudice partly by lowering intergroup anxiety. #expands (0.85) — Miles Hewstone and Joanne Hughes, Reconciliation in Northern Ireland, 11
• Cross-group friendship especially reduces prejudice through intimacy and equal-status contact. #expands (0.85) — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 98
• Equal-status, purposeful, community-sanctioned contact best reduces prejudice. #expands (0.82) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 540
• Bonding-only social capital can deepen instead of heal racial division #corroborates (0.80) — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1291
• Cross-group friendship shapes positive intergroup attitudes more than casual contact does. #expands (0.80) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 556
• Cross-group friendships cause later intergroup trust, not the reverse. #expands (0.80) — Miles Hewstone and Joanne Hughes, Reconciliation in Northern Ireland, 10
• Gated rich communities and ghettos are mirror images sustaining segregation #corroborates (0.80)
• Strong community ties inherently enable exclusion and intergroup violence. #qualifies (0.75)
• Cooperative learning increases intergroup friendships while competition reduces them. #expands (0.75) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2660