Ethnic Diversity in Workplaces and Neighbourhoods: Prejudice and the Countervailing Role of Positive/Negative Inter-group Contact

• In Event: 517 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Paper Sessions. Race and Ethnicity in Organizations and Markets

Abstract

This study addresses two issues with the current literature investigating the relationship between contextual out-group exposure, inter-group attitudes and the role of inter-group contact. Firstly, it introduces the concept of contact-valence into this relationship. Secondly, it performs a comparative analysis into how processes of out-group exposure and frequency of (valenced) contact affect prejudice across both neighbourhoods and workplaces. Applying regression analyses to a nationally-representative sample of white British individuals in England, we demonstrate, across both sites, that increasing out-group exposure is associated with higher rates of both positive- and negative-valenced contact. This results in exposure exhibiting both positive and negative indirect associations with prejudice via more frequent inter-group mixing. These countervailing contact-pathways, in turn, affect how out-group exposure is directly associated with inter-group attitudes, and play a key role in accounting for site-specific differences in exposure’s effects. In neighbourhoods, increasing rates of positive-contact suppress an otherwise negative effect of exposure, driven, in part, by increasing rates of negative contact. Across workplaces, increasing rates of negative-contact suppress an otherwise positive effect of exposure, driven largely by increasing rates of positive contact.

Author

• James Laurence, Manchester University