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We assess the mechanisms whereby first-person narratives featuring stigmatized immigrants improve outgroup attitudes and encourage intergroup contact among prejudiced individuals. We rely on a 2 (imagined contact) x 2 (similarity) experiment on a systematic sample of native British adults. We find that encouraging imagined contact prior to reading a narrative message that presents an immigrant protagonist who is similar to the recipients enhances identification with the protagonist, thereby improving outgroup attitudes and encouraging intergroup contact, and only among those who are strongly negative toward immigrants (i.e., high on modern racism). We discuss theoretical and practical implications of the findings for the work on imagined contact, narrative persuasion, and identification, as well as for public communication campaigns.
Juan Jose Igartua, U of Salamanca
Magdalena Wojcieszak, University of California, Davis
Nuri Kim, Nanyang Technological U