By Shpend Voca 1, Anna Kende 2, Boglárka Nyúl 2

1 AAB College, Prishtina, Kosovo
2 Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

Intergroup Contact and Anti-Gypsyism

Intergroup contact is one of the most effective ways to reduce prejudice (Dovidio et al., 2003). Even mere frequency of intergroup contact is associated with lower prejudice (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). Intergroup friendship has a stronger effect on prejudice than less intimate forms of intergroup contact (Davies et al., 2011). In the context of Roma – non-Roma relations, however, the evidence on intergroup contact and prejudice relationship is scarce and not consistent. Greater frequency of intergroup contact between non-Roma and Roma Hungarians and Slovaks was associated with higher prejudice (Kende, Hadarics, & Lášticová, 2017). Intergroup contact between Roma and non-Roma Hungarians designed experimentally in educational settings linked with higher liking and lower modern racism against Roma people (i.e., limited resources are distributed in favor of Roma; Kende, Tropp, & Lantos, 2017; Orosz et al., 2016). These results suggest that while mere frequency of intergroup contact with Roma can increase prejudice, positive intergroup contact experiences can decrease it. In our research, we bring additional evidence on the relationship between the frequency and the valence of intergroup contact and anti-Gypsyism.

Our research also focused on positive and negative extended intergroup contact (i.e., that is observing or knowing about positive and negative contact experiences between an ingroup and an outgroup member) that represents an alternative tool for reducing prejudice in the absence of actual intergroup contact (Wright et al., 1997). This is especially relevant for the context of Roma and non-Roma relations, considering that actual intergroup contact is scarce and positive contact is counter-normative, rather than normative. As such, extended contact can have a wider impact shared across many people compared to actual intergroup contact (Christ et al., 2010). Considerable evidence showed that positive extended contact reduced prejudice against many social groups, whereas negative extended contact increased it (Mazziotta et al., 2015; for a review see Vezzali et al., 2014). Surprisingly, to the best of our knowledge, there was no research evidence on the relationship between positive and negative extended intergroup contact and anti-Gypsyism, and we addressed this.

What Activities Were Undertaken?

We conducted two correlational studies among university students in Kosovo (N = 302) and Hungary (N = 449) and two experimental studies in Hungary with students (N = 434) and in Kosovo with general population (N = 778). In the correlational studies, we found that positive extended contact was negatively associated with anti-Gypsyism through positive direct contact and negative extended contact was positively associated with anti-Gypsyism through negative direct contact. In the experimental studies, we confirmed that positive extended contact decreased anti-Gypsyism through increased positive contact expectations, and negative extended contact increased anti-Gypsyism through increased negative contact expectations. Importantly, we showed that when positive contact is presented as normative, it has a greater impact than any personal positive experience can. This is especially relevant in social, political contexts in which egalitarian social norms are weak, and anti-Gypsyism is a widespread and socially accepted attitude.

Contribution to the Wider Research Activities

EASP Collaborative Research Grant enriches the literature on intergroup contact and prejudice against Roma. This grant contributed to an increased cooperation between researchers in the project, extending the research team and gathering experimental data with a general population via a local research agency. We plan to build intervention studies based on these results and hope that this research can impact intervention strategies for reducing anti-Gypsyism, especially in East-Central European countries.

References

Christ, O., Hewstone, M., Tausch, N., Wagner, U., Voci, A., Hughes, J., & Cairns, E. (2010). Direct contact as a moderator of extended contact effects: Cross-sectional and longitudinal impact on outgroup attitudes, behavioral intentions, and attitude certainty. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36, 1662–1674. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0146167210386969

Davies, K., Tropp, L. R., Aron, A., Pettigrew, T. F., & Wright, S. C. (2011). Cross-group friendships and intergroup attitudes: A meta-analytic review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15, 332–351. doi:10.1177/1088868311411103

Dovidio, J. F., Gaertner, S. L., & Kawakami, K. (2003). Intergroup Contact: The Past, Present, and the Future. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 6, 5 – 21. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430203006001009

Kende, A., Hadarics, M., & Lášticová, B. (2017). Anti-Roma attitudes as expressions of dominant social norms in Eastern Europe. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 60, 12–27. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2017.06.002

Kende, A., Tropp, L., & Lantos, N. A. (2017). Testing a contact intervention based on intergroup friendship between Roma and non-Roma Hungarians: Reducing bias through institutional support in a non-supportive societal context. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 47, 47–55. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12422

Lášticová, B., & Findor, A. (2016). Developing explicit measures of stereotypes and anti-Roma prejudice in Slovakia: Conceptual and methodological challenges. Human Affairs, 26, 233–252. http://doi.org/10.1515/humaff-2016-0022

Mazziotta, A., Rohmann, A., Wright, S. C., Pinto, T. P., & Lutterbach, S. (2015). (How) does positive and negative extended cross‐group contact predict direct cross‐group contact and intergroup attitudes? European Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 653–667. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2110

Orosz, G., Bánki, E., Bőthe, B., Tóth-Király, I., & Tropp, L. R. (2016). Don't judge a living book by its cover: effectiveness of the living library intervention in reducing prejudice toward Roma and LGBT people. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 46, 510–517. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12379.

Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 751–783. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.90.5.751

Vezzali, L., Hewstone, M., Capozza, D., Giovannini, D., & Wölfer, R. (2014). Improving intergroup relations with extended and vicarious forms of indirect contact. European Review of Social Psychology, 25, 314–389. https://doi.org/10.1080/10463283.2014.982948

Wright, C. S., Aron, A., McLaughlin-Volpe, T., & Ropp, A. S. (1997). The extended contact effect: Knowledge of cross-group friendship and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 73-90. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.73.1.73