Presentation: Does Intergroup Contact and Attitudes Change Across Time? Results of 14 Person-Centered Latent Trajectory Models

Presenter: Dr Alexander O’Donnell is an applied researcher whose work sits at the nexus of developmental, community, and social psychology. He aims to exploit the benefits of longitudinal data to identify mechanisms that can help overcome structural and social disadvantages disproportionally present in specific social groups. This research concentrates on identifying how public spaces and positive relationships with others can mitigate the risks associated with individual and contextual stressors. He is currently employed as a Lecturer at the University of Tasmania.

Abstract: Recent high-quality investigations of intergroup contact have failed to detect a temporal and potentially causal association between intergroup contact and attitudes. In turn, scholars have attempted to reconcile why longitudinal effects rarely emerge despite the strong and well replicated cross-sectional association between contact and attitudes. One argument proposes an asymptotic pattern of change, whereby initial intergroup encounters instils more tolerant beliefs that subsequently become crystalized and incapable of further change. The use of variable-centered analytical approaches in multicultural societies obscures these differences, by exploring average rates of change within a population. In this presentation, we will distinguish distinct classes of participants who share similar starting points and trajectories of change in intergroup contact and attitudes. This approach should isolate individuals with consistently positive attitudes to hopefully illuminate a smaller portion of respondents with attitudes more malleable to the enriching experiences of intergroup contact. In 7 distinct samples from New Zealand (Study 1, N = 15,384), Germany (Studies 2-5, N = 2,726; Study 7, N = 1,667), and the Netherlands (Study 6, N = 2,949) we have conducted latent growth class analyses to map intercepts and trajectories of change for both intergroup contact and attitudes towards 14 outgroups. In total, we identified 104 distinct classes across the samples. Although there was evidence of some intrapersonal growth for both contact and attitudes within some groups, the effects were always small in magnitude giving the appearance of a stair-case pattern denoting between-person differences and limited evidence for meaningful within-person change. The talk will conclude with reflections on the future of intergroup contact theory.