REDUCING PREJUDICE: THE ROLE PLAYED BY PHYSICAL CONTACT IN INTERGROUP RELATIONS

Research suggests we have an innate capacity to communicate via touch. Also, studies have shown that touch strongly affects people. Indeed, touch has positive effects at the intrapersonal level (e.g., enhanced levels of oxytocin and decreased levels of cortisol) and also at the interpersonal level (e.g., pro-social behavior and more positive attitudes towards the toucher). Recently it has been investigated whether physical contact may also have positive effects when touch occurs between people pertaining to different groups. It has been shown that touch administered by an outgroup member improves attitudes towards the group to which the toucher belongs. Yet, research on this topic is not particularly present in the literature. Thus, the aim of this set of studies is to gather further evidence on the effects of touch in intergroup contexts. The study presented in Chapter 1 provides initial evidence of an existing relation between the use of physical contact with an outgroup member and attitudes towards the outgroup and this relation is mediated by quality of intergroup contact. Yet, intergroup contact is not straightforward due to existing negative attitudes towards the outgroup (e.g., ethnic groups, homosexuals etc.) and consequently also the use of physical contact. Based on this, the following studies (Chapter 2 & Chapter 3) investigated the role of intergroup physical contact by relying on indirect forms of contact which have shown to be effective in improving outgroup attitudes. We asked participants to mentally simulate a physical encounter with the outgroup member (i.e., imagined contact) while also providing participants a visual cue (i.e., picture of a hand touch). By giving participants a visual cue we were able to guide participants’ mental imagery and make them perceive the touch in a similar way, not only in terms of modality in which the touch was administered, but also in terms of the specific body part involved. In Study 1 of Chapter 2, participants who imagined touching the hand of an immigrant (i.e., Intergroup physical contact; InterPC) showed reduced intergroup bias compared to participants who imagined being outdoors (i.e., Control condition). Study 2 of Chapter 2, clarified that participants need to imagine a physical encounter specifically with an outgroup member given that imagining touching an uncategorized individual (i.e., intragroup physical contact; IntraPC) did not reduce intergroup bias compared to the InterPC condition. Study 3 of Chapter 2 aimed at understanding whether imagined intergroup physical contact could also affect implicit attitudes. In addition, this study further investigated whether the results found in Study 1 and 2 were driven by the imagined experience or merely to a priming/social influence effect triggered by the visual cue. Participants were randomly assigned to either an InterPC or an IntraPC condition. A third experimental condition was here added, in which participants saw the same picture as in the InterPC condition but in this case no mental simulation of the interaction was requested, instead their task was to evaluate the quality of the image (i.e., InterPC-quality). Results showed that participants who imagined touching the hand of an immigrant showed lower levels of implicit prejudice compared to both the control conditions. Finally, the study presented in Chapter 3 aimed at further extending the external validity of the findings by testing the effects of imagined intergroup physical contact with the group of gay individuals. Results show that gender differences play a central role in this respect. Indeed, male but not female participants reported a less positive appraisal of the imagined encounter when they imagined touching the hand of a gay individual (i.e., InterPC) compared to an uncategorized person (Un-CatPC). Furthermore, female, but not male participants, showed higher levels of self-outgroup similarity in the InterPC compared to the Un-CatPC condition.