Knowing that ingroup friends interact with outgroup members reduces prejudice without any direct contact.

Evidence

Indirect or extended contact refers to the (mere) knowledge of a fellow in-group member’s contact with out-group members (typically, but not necessarily, the fellow in-group members are ones to whom one is close, e.g., family members or friends; Wright et al., 1997; see Turner et al., 2007, for a review). The effects of extended contact are especially strong for individuals who have no direct contact themselves (see Christ et al., 2010). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 556

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Defines ‘extended contact’ and pins down its distinctive effect — that mere knowledge, not experience, drives the benefit.
• XREF: Connects to Allport’s original contact hypothesis and the debiasing of intergroup attitudes through social networks.

Related

• Mere knowledge of a fellow in-group member’s contact with out-groups reduces prejudice. (similarity 0.96)
• Mere knowledge that ingroup peers befriend outgroup members improves intergroup attitudes (similarity 0.92)
• Knowing in-group peers befriend out-group others raises one’s perceived category complexity (similarity 0.89)
• Contact with one out-group improves attitudes toward unrelated out-groups (similarity 0.88)
• Cross-group friendships reduce prejudice partly by lowering intergroup anxiety. (similarity 0.87)
• Intergroup contact reduces prejudice best when group categories stay salient. (similarity 0.86)
• Interdependence motives make people perceive outgroup members accurately (similarity 0.85)
• Intergroup contact reduces prejudice even beyond the groups involved. (similarity 0.85)
• Cross-group friendship especially reduces prejudice through intimacy and equal-status contact. (similarity 0.85)
• Learning facts about outgroups is not the main way contact reduces prejudice (similarity 0.84)
• Social identity complexity mediates how intergroup contact shapes out-group attitudes (similarity 0.84)
• Affective factors, not knowledge gain, drive contact’s prejudice-reducing effect (similarity 0.84)
• Personalized intergroup contact reduces prejudice by making category boundaries less meaningful. (similarity 0.84)
• Salient group category awareness improves prejudice reduction during contact. (similarity 0.83)
• Face-to-face contact with out-group individuals can improve attitudes toward the whole group. (similarity 0.83)