Specific emotions as mediators of the effect of intergroup contact on prejudice: findings across multiple participant and target groups

Seger, Charles R., Banerji, Ishani, Park, Sang Hee, Smith, Eliot R. and Mackie, Diane M. (2017) Specific emotions as mediators of the effect of intergroup contact on prejudice: findings across multiple participant and target groups. Cognition and Emotion, 31 (5). pp. 923-936. ISSN 0269-9931

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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.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: intergroup contact,emotions,attitudes,prejudice,intergroup relations,social image
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Sciences
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Cognition, Action and Perception
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Social Cognition Research Group
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Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 10 May 2016 13:00
Last Modified: 19 Apr 2023 13:30
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/58627
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2016.1182893

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