The Liberalizing Effect of Intergroup Contact

• In Event: Reckoning with Racism

Abstract

Political ideologies, defined as a “set of beliefs about the proper order of society and how it can be achieved” (Jost, Federico, and Napier 2009, 309), are not formed or maintained in a vacuum, but are shaped and enacted through social interactions (Dassonneville and McAllister, 2018; Merelman 1969). Building on the intergroup contact hypothesis—which posits that interactions across social groups facilitate the development of favorable intergroup attitudes (Allport 1954)— prior research finds that interactions with other social groups shape individuals’ opinions on policy issues. For example, recent studies have shown that intergroup contact between natives and immigrants reduces support for anti-immigration policies (Andersson and Dehdari 2021) and contact between domestic and international students increases support for global environmental initiatives (Meleady et al. 2019). However, prior work stops short of addressing whether the effects of intergroup contact extend beyond specific policy issues to influence underlying ideological beliefs. This is an important limitation as political ideology has profound implications on a wide range of individuals’ attitudes and behaviors (Jost 2006). Thus, in this study, we ask: how does intergroup contact influence individuals’ political ideology?
To answer this question, we build on the core differences in liberals’ and conservatives’ beliefs about social structure to hypothesize that contact with outgroup members strengthens support for a liberal ideology. This is because political ideology encompasses individuals’ beliefs about social hierarchy (Jost et al. 2009) and intergroup contact alters perceptions of social hierarchy to feature more inclusive and equal social categories (Allport 1954). We argue that the inclusive perceptions of social structure following intergroup contact will accumulate dissonance with a conservative ideology, which is associated with more exclusive social categorizations and stricter intergroup boundaries (Janoff-Bulman 2009), prompting individuals to recast their political views. To provide further support for the liberalizing effect of intergroup contact, we also hypothesize that this effect is accentuated for minorities, who already experience weaker social categorization with their ingroup.
We test and find empirical support for our hypotheses by studying government mandated COVID-19 stay-at-home orders and NASA spaceflights, which limit and isolate intergroup contact. First, we use county-level voting records in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election and find that the share of votes to the democratic candidate dropped from 42 percent to 30 percent with an additional two-week lockdown extension, and this effect was larger for minority communities. Second, we take advantage of all NASA-involved space missions between 1961 and 2019 to isolate intergroup contact. We find that replacing one astronaut in an all-U.S. crew with an international team member increases the average likelihood of an astronaut donating to a liberal political campaign by 83 percent, and this effect was also stronger for minority crewmembers. These results provide evidence that contact with outgroup members yields a liberalizing effect on individual’s political attitudes and behaviors and demonstrates the wide-reaching and lasting effects of intergroup contact beyond specific policy issues.
Our findings have critical theoretical and practical implications for research on political ideology and diversity. First, we build upon recent research that has found an effect of intergroup contact on various policy issues by demonstrating that contact’s effect extends to shape individuals’ political ideology. Therefore, we advance literature on the social conditions by which individuals’ ideologies are formed and shaped (Harris 2018). Second, our study makes several contributions to the intergroup contact hypothesis. Recent research examining the effects of intergroup contact has yielded mixed results (Zhou et al. 2019). We demonstrate that individuals who experienced intergroup contact are significantly more supportive of liberal ideology, and thus, more tolerant of other social groups. This finding addresses an important debate on whether intergroup contact only reduces individual prejudice or generalizes to entire outgroups (McKeown and Dixon 2017). Prior research has also provided conflicting evidence for the contact hypothesis’ effect on minorities (Ertug and Maoret 2019). Our finding that intergroup contact for these individuals increases political engagement and support for a liberal ideology that desires social change strongly contrasts the notion that that positive contact may lead to a “sedative effect” among minorities as they come to accept social inequalities in the status quo (Dixon, Durrheim, and Tredoux 2007). The findings of this study should remind academics of the importance of diversity in breaking down intergroup bias.

Author

• Thomas John Fewer, Georgetown University