Even when they’re someone else’s friendships, explains Rhiannon Turner

People often assume that simply bringing together members of opposing groups will result in more harmonious relations between them.  Social psychologists argue, however, that intergroup contact will only lead to reductions in group-based prejudice if the conditions are right.

Our recent research has investigated which types of intergroup contact best reduce prejudice and produce intergroup harmony, what positive consequences they have for intergroup relations, and how and why they work.

Cross-group friendships

We found friendships that cross group boundaries to have a number of positive implications for intergroup relations. Asian and white British primary school children, secondary school children, and university students who had friends in the other community held more positive attitudes towards the other community and believed the other community to be more trustworthy.

In addition, the more friends people had in the other group, the more heterogeneous that group was perceived to be; rather than seeing Asian people as ‘all the same as one another’, having Asian friends led white people to believe that there are lots of variations among Asians. This is important because the more variable we see a group as being, the more difficult it is for us to apply a stereotype to that whole group.

We found that cross-group friendships led members of different groups to disclose more personal information to one another, increasing intimacy, trust, and liking. Cross-group friendships also led to greater empathy towards the opposing group, and reduced anxiety about interacting with them.

Knowledge of friendships

Despite these benefits, cross-group friendship is reliant on there being the opportunity to meet members of the other group. So how can prejudice be reduced in segregated settings?

Our recent research has shown that ‘extended contact’, the mere knowledge that other group members have cross-group friends, can reduce prejudice and increase perceptions of the variability of the opposing group. Observing members of one’s own group interacting positively and successfully with a member of the other group allayed fears and negative expectations about that group, resulting in more positive attitudes towards them.

Encouraging empathy

These findings indicate that where members of different communities can be brought together, through community- and school-based schemes, practitioners should encourage close ties between members of different groups.

Interventions that encourage discussion of personal information, generate empathy and reduce anxiety may be particularly effective at reducing prejudice. When there is no opportunity for direct intergroup contact, simply learning about group members whose initial fears and preconceptions about the other group were broken down, as a result of having close cross-group friends, may be an effective antidote to prejudice.

Rhiannon Turner is at the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University