August 25th-27th, 2024 in Hamburg, Germany

The intergroup contact hypothesis, which assumes that interactions between members of different groups improve outgroup attitudes, is widely discussed as a potent pathway enhancing intergroup relations. Seventy years after the publication of Allport’s seminal work, intergroup contact research is still thriving and is being addressed by a large community of researchers. However, recent overviews have identified a number of aspects of intergroup contact research that need further attention, such as a more differentiated understanding of intergroup contact effects for minority groups, the adequate analysis of longitudinal contact data, the identification of predictors of intergroup contact, a more detailed investigation of contact self-selection effects, the integration of different levels of analysis, a call for methodological sound intervention studies in the field, and many more.

Investigating these broad research questions is very challenging for individual researchers because it requires considerable expertise and resources. Therefore, the meeting was designed to initiate large collaborative research projects across different researchers and labs. It brought together a group of 51 researchers, including individuals at all career levels, from Master's degree students to senior professors, from various countries in Europe, the Middle East, North America, and Australia, with 29 of them being members of the EASP (European Association of Social Psychology). The event took place at the MSH Medical School Hamburg at the end of August 2024 and spanned three days.

Unlike “traditional” conference formats, which mainly focus on presenting recently conducted research projects, this small-group meeting focused on future research and addressed the big questions of the field. Instead of discussing isolated new results, the meeting provided a platform for initiating and fostering collaborative research activities and discussing broad questions in intergroup contact research that need to be addressed collaboratively using big team science-approaches in the future.

The meeting began with a presentation providing a brief overview of participants’ perspectives on the field and open research questions. After that the invited speakers John Dixon (The Open University, UK), Eva Green (Université de Lausanne, Switzerland), Tabea Hässler (Universität Zürich, Switzerland), Nils Reimer (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA) and Linda Tropp (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA) shared their expertise and perspectives on the current state of intergroup contact research. They discussed issues related to the effectiveness of intergroup contact in divided societies and non-WEIRD countries, resegregation tendencies and avoidance of intergroup contact, the relevance of contextual perspectives for the field, methodological innovations, and challenges in conducting multi-national research projects. The presentations were followed by an extensive discussion which ended with the constitution of five subgroups working on different topics:

1. Intergroup contact interventions
2. Predictors of intergroup contact
3. Contextual effects on intergroup contact
4. Measurement and methodology
5. Outgroups of intergroup contact and generalization effects.

These topics were then discussed within the subgroups with the aim of generating plans for future research agendas. At the end of the conference, the different subgroups presented their initial results, which served as a base of future collaborative work in the next months. All presentations and written outcomes of the meeting are publicly available on the Open Science Framework (OSF; https://osf.io/p7c6k/).

The meeting also allowed time for social interactions and provided opportunities for joint meals and social activities. It was further accompanied by mentoring opportunities.

In personal conversations during the meeting, it was said that the innovative format of the meeting was perceived as comparatively intense but above all as exceptionally productive. Participants also shared that they liked the collaborative and friendly atmosphere. In a more formal evaluation that was conducted after the meeting (including responses from 32 of the 51 participants), over 97 percent of the respondents rather or fully agreed that they enjoyed the innovative collaborative character of the meeting and its focus on open-science (items were assessed on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 ‘don’t agree’ to 5 ‘fully agree’). Moreover, all respondents rather or fully agreed that the meeting was productive and inspiring. Additionally, 25 percent of the respondents rated the meeting as “rather positive” and 75 percent as “very positive” (item was assessed on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 ‘very negative’ to 5 ‘very positive’). All results of the evaluation can be found on the OSF.

Not surprisingly, some of the participants already started to actively engage in the organisation of subsequent meetings with a similar format. In addition, the members of all subgroups have virtually met at least once to proceed working on the identified research agendas. At this point, it is important to note that the meeting participants do not see themselves as an exclusive group and that there is an opportunity for interested parties to join the existing groups. If you are interested, please contact the organizers.

The organizers of the meeting, Maria-Therese Friehs and Oliver Christ (FernUniversität in Hagen), and Mathias Kauff (MSH Medical School Hamburg), want to acknowledge that the meeting would not have been possible without the generous funding of the involved academic institutions, the FernUniversität in Hagen and the MSH Medical School Hamburg. Finally, the organizers would like to express their gratitude and appreciation to EASP for their valuable support in making the event possible and to all the attendees who participated in the meeting for their valuable contributions.