Prejudice Reduction through Intergroup Contact on Social Media

Reducing prejudice has long been a central pillar of efforts to improve intergroup relations. Intergroup contact (i.e., fostering positive interactions between members of different groups) is arguably the most reliably effective tool for prejudice reduction known to social scientists. Yet, major challenges inherent to studying and applying intergroup contact hold it back from readiness for practical application at scale and in the real world. Because it is so widely used and allows for low- or no-cost, scalable intervention, I propose that using social media to study intergroup contact may help us push contact research forward to applied readiness. I therefore present a set of studies developing, validating, and testing an approach to using intergroup contact in the context of social media to intervene to reduce prejudice. In Study 1, I find that intergroup contact on social media is associated with less prejudice and more positive intergroup outcomes in a similar way as intergroup contact that takes place in-person. In Study 2, I find that the associations can be observed longitudinally and using behavioral variables collected in the field (i.e., on participants’ real Twitter accounts). In the Study 3 Pilot, I find that manipulating the racial demographics of accounts posting to participants’ real Twitter feeds impacts how much intergroup contact they subjectively experience on Twitter. Finally, in Study 3, I find that manipulating the racial demographics of accounts posting to participants’ real Twitter feeds may have a causal effect on their racial prejudice, but only when participants were interested in the content that was posted. These results suggest that a no-cost, scalable intervention strategy for reducing prejudice and improving intergroup relations through intergroup contact on social media may be effective. They also speak to the need for interventionists to attend to participants’ interests and motivations, particularly in field settings. Open materials and data for all studies and pre-registrations for Studies 2 and 3 can be found on the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/jz8hm?view_only=64ac338f0a49482194df29149157180e.

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