Intergroup contact is an established pathway to improve intergroup relations. Research has long focused on mainly positive intergroup contact and its capability to improve intergroup relations. Yet, if members of different groups meet, they will not only make positive, but possibly also negative intergroup contact experiences. Recent research considering both positive as well as negative intergroup contact has raised concerns about potentially stronger effects of negative compared to positive contact. These new insights and the increasing awareness of potentially detrimental effects of contact could lead to doubts about whether it is always sensible to bring individuals from different groups together. Our article first updates the latest review on joint effects of positive and negative intergroup contact. We find that there is no clear tendency for either positive or negative intergroup contact to yield stronger effects on intergroup relations, and we portray factors that might influence these effects. Such factors-for example an individual's prior experiences-could play a crucial role in defining the relevance of negative contact This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
Immigration leads to strong and polarized public and political debates in Europe and the Western world more generally. In some of these debates, migrants are described as either having little choice but to migrate (involuntary) or as migrating out of their own free choice (voluntary). In two studies and using a social psychological perspective, native Dutch respondents were asked about their support for policies aimed at cultural rights and public assistance to perceived voluntary and involuntary migrants. Study 1 showed that stronger agreement with migration being voluntary was associated with lower policy support, while agreement with migration being involuntary was independently associated with higher support. In Study 2 the degree of support was examined as a consequence of feelings of empathy and anger. Perceived involuntariness of migration elicited feelings of empathy and therefore higher support for newcomers. In contrast, perceived voluntariness elicited stronger anger and therefore less support.
A considerable portion of European citizens are in favour of limited or conditional access for migrants to welfare provisions. Previous studies found that this welfare chauvinism is stronger among citizens with less favourable economic positions. This study seeks to explain the relationship between economic risk, both objective and subjective, and welfare chauvinism by looking at two distinct mechanisms: the traditional economic explanation of economic egalitarianism and the cultural explanation of ethnic threat. Given the lack of longitudinal studies, we also examine whether changes in economic risk, economic egalitarianism and threat can explain changes in welfare chauvinism over time. Using a four-wave panel-study (2013–2015) collected in Great Britain and the Netherlands, these relationships were studied both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. The longitudinal mediation model was tested by making use of parallel process latent growth curve modelling. In both Great Britain and the Netherlands, economic egalitarianism and ethnic threat explained the link between economic risk and welfare chauvinism. Furthermore, in both countries, an increase over time in perceptions of ethnic threat was found to be the driving force behind an increase in welfare chauvinism, irrespective of changes in economic egalitarianism.
Using data from three national surveys, the present research investigates among the native Dutch (Studies 1 to 3) and three immigrant‐origin groups (Study 3) the endorsement of a shared sense of national belonging across cultural differences. The endorsement is examined in relation to political orientation and education, and sociocultural (deprovincialization) and egalitarian (autochthony) beliefs. In all three studies, a more right‐wing orientation and lower education were associated with lower endorsement of common national belonging. Furthermore, deprovincialization and autochthony were independent mediating beliefs in these associations. The findings were similar for native majority members and immigrants, with the exception of the role of autochthony belief. The results are discussed in relation to future research on cultural diversity and the societal importance of developing a shared sense of belonging despite group differences.
This study extends the literature on the relationship between ethnic neighbourhood composition and cohesion, trust, and prejudice, by considering the influence of both positive and negative interethnic contact. We employ multilevel structural equation modelling, with individuals nested in neighbourhoods, using a unique dataset collected in England in 2017 amongst 1,520 White British and 1,474 Asian British respondents. Our results show that negative interethnic contact, unlike positive interethnic contact, is not related to ethnic neighbourhood composition. Specifically, White British people who live in neighbourhoods with relatively many Asian British people have, as expected, more positive but, encouragingly, not more negative interethnic contact. For Asian people, living in neighbourhoods with relatively many White people is unrelated to both their positive and negative interethnic contact. Furthermore, White and Asian people who have more positive interethnic contact score higher on perceived cohesion, general trust, and outgroup trust and lower on prejudice. The opposite holds true for White and Asian people who have more negative interethnic contact.
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