title: Specific emotions as mediators of the effect of intergroup contact on prejudice: findings across multiple participant and target groups.
abstract: Emotions are increasingly being recognised as important aspects of prejudice and intergroup behaviour. Specifically, emotional mediators play a key role in the process by which intergroup contact reduces prejudice towards outgroups. However, which particular emotions are most important for prejudice reduction, as well as the consistency and generality of emotion-prejudice relations across different in-group-out-group relations, remain uncertain. To address these issues, in Study 1 we examined six distinct positive and negative emotions as mediators of the contact-prejudice relations using representative samples of U.S. White, Black, and Asian American respondents (N = 639). Admiration and anger (but not other emotions) were significant mediators of the effects of previous contact on prejudice, consistently across different perceiver and target ethnic groups. Study 2 examined the same relations with student participants and gay men as the out-group. Admiration and disgust mediated the effect of past contact on attitude. The findings confirm that not only negative emotions (anger or disgust, based on the specific types of threat perceived to be posed by an out-group), but also positive, status- and esteem-related emotions (admiration) mediate effects of contact on prejudice, robustly across several different respondent and target groups.
authors.affiliation: a School of Psychology , University of East Anglia , Norwich , UK.
authors.forename: Charles R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Seger
authors.affiliation: b Department of Marketing , University of Texas at San Antonio , San Antonio , TX , USA.
authors.forename: Ishani
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Banerji
authors.affiliation: c Department of Psychology , Chungbuk National University , Cheongju , Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Sang Hee
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Park
authors.affiliation: d Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences , Indiana University Bloomington , Bloomington , IN , USA.
authors.forename: Eliot R
authors.initials: ER
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.affiliation: e Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences , University of California at Santa Barbara , Santa Barbara , CA , USA.
authors.forename: Diane M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Mackie
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology; D001213:Asian / Q000523:psychology; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011287:Prejudice / Q000523:psychology*; D000072339:Sexual and Gender Minorities / Q000523:psychology; D012933:Social Identification; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Intergroup contact; attitudes; emotions; intergroup relations; prejudice; social image