Online intergroup contact: the role of Allport’s conditions for majority and minority group members

Online interactions have become central in today’s digital age. Importantly, they provide social psychologists with new tools to tackle prejudice reduction among different social groups. Initial evidence shows that online contact has the potential to reduce conflicts between majority and minority groups. However, as it is quite clear for the offline environment, simple contact does not automatically lead to improved social relationships. On the contrary, negative consequences are also possible, as suggested by Gordon Allport (1954), who identified four optimal conditions that facilitate prejudice reduction through face-to-face intergroup contact: equal status, cooperation, common goals, and authority support. Although few scholars have recently turned to the investigation of online contact, we still know little about which variables play a distinctive role and about its consequences on the relationships between majority and minority social groups. More specifically, it is not yet clear whether Allport's conditions play a role in facilitating the effects of contact on prejudice even when intergroup interactions occur online. Furthermore, research on online intergroup contact has recently broadened its focus to intergroup relations between people with different sexual orientations. However, there is not yet sufficient evidence to draw firm conclusions about its effects in this intergroup context. Consequently, this thesis aims to investigate the role played by Allport's conditions in the intergroup contact that takes place online, with particular attention to the differences in their effect on sexual majority and minority social groups. To this end, this work is composed of three studies. Study 1 is a systematic review of the literature on online intergroup contact, which aimed to review studies investigating intergroup contact in online settings, with particular attention to the involvement of majority and minority social groups and the investigation/implementation of Allport's conditions in the contact. Results showed that studies on structured online contact implemented the conditions in very different and sometimes not comparable ways, that no studies have tested the effects of contact by comparing the presence with the absence of the conditions, and that no correlational study has investigated their effect in spontaneous and unstructured online contact. Results also showed that social minorities are widely underrepresented in online intergroup contact literature. Based on this evidence, Study 2 aimed to understand the role played by Allport’s conditions in an online intergroup structured interaction for sexual majority and minority social groups. To this end, we developed an intervention in which heterosexual and gay/bisexual participants (N = 149) interacted through a pre-programmed chat with an outgroup member in one of the three experimental conditions: Allport’s conditions activated, Allport’s conditions not activated, or control. Results showed that participants who interacted with the outgroup member when Allport’s conditions were activated reported more favorable intergroup attitudes than those who interacted with the outgroup member when Allport’s conditions were not activated and the control group. Furthermore, only when minority participants were added to the sample was this positive effect of the conditions also found on intergroup empathy. Finally, Study 3 aimed to investigate the role played by Allport’s conditions in online intergroup unstructured interactions on social media for sexual majority and minority social groups. To this end, heterosexual (n = 199) and gay/lesbian (n = 90) participants completed an online survey to assess the quality of online contact, Allport’s conditions, and intergroup outcomes. Results showed a three-way interaction between quality of contact, group status, and two of the four Allport’s conditions, namely common goals and equal status. For minority participants, when common goals and equal status were perceived as stronger, the positive relation between the quality of online contact and outgroup trust increased (while it decreased for majority participants). Looking at the overall results, the effect of Allport’s conditions in online intergroup contact, both structured and unstructured, appears to be quite weak. However, the role of the conditions seems more important for the minority social group. Although two studies are not sufficient to draw definitive conclusions, the present work carried out for the first time an empirical investigation of the role of Allport's conditions in both structured and unstructured online contact, comparing a majority and minority group.