Direct and Indirect Intergroup Friendship Effects: Testing the Moderating Role of the Affective-Cognitive Bases of Prejudice

Abstract

Direct friendship with outgroup members and the knowledge of ingroup-outgroup friendships (indirect friendship) can both reduce outgroup prejudice. Three correlational studies (Ns = 338, 141, and 798) tested the moderating role of the affective-cognitive bases of prejudice, assessing whether the size of the friendship- prejudice relationship depends on the extent to which emotions (vs. thoughts) are relevant to the prejudiced attitudes at stake. In Study 1, direct friendship effects were larger with outgroups generating stronger affective responding than with outgroups generating stronger cognitive responding, whereas indirect friendship effects were larger with cognitive than with affective outgroups. Study 2 detected a similar pattern but with prejudice basis assessed in terms of individual differences. Study 3 replicated Study 2's indirect friendship-cognitive basis moderation in a context of historically polarized intergroup relations and on two new outcome variables, intergroup trust and negative action tendencies.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 128 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.