Cross-group friendship weakens national pride and provincialism

Evidence

Ingroup norms and customs turn out not to be the only ways to manage the social world. This new perspective can reshape your view of your ingroup and lead to a less provincial view of outgroups in general (“deprovincialization”). In the European surveys, outgroup friendship related to significantly less “pride” in nationality even after education, age, and political conservatism are controlled (Pettigrew 1997c). — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Intergroup Contact Theory, 55

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces ‘deprovincialization’ — the underused half of contact theory, focused on the ingroup rather than the outgroup.
• SEED: An essay on how exposure to outsiders quietly dissolves patriotism, and why that terrifies nationalist movements.