The Wallpaper Effect: The Contact Hypothesis Fails for Minority Group Members Who Live in Areas with a High Proportion of Majority Group Members
We aim to provide one explanation for why the link between contact and prejudice is consistently less strong for minority group members than it is for majority group members. Specifically, we propose a “wallpaper effect” such that contact works to increase minority group members' positivity tow...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2013
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3859597/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24349227 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0082228 |
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author | Barlow, Fiona Kate Hornsey, Matthew J. Thai, Michael Sengupta, Nikhil K. Sibley, Chris G. |
author_facet | Barlow, Fiona Kate Hornsey, Matthew J. Thai, Michael Sengupta, Nikhil K. Sibley, Chris G. |
author_sort | Barlow, Fiona Kate |
collection | PubMed |
description | We aim to provide one explanation for why the link between contact and prejudice is consistently less strong for minority group members than it is for majority group members. Specifically, we propose a “wallpaper effect” such that contact works to increase minority group members' positivity towards majority groups when they live in areas densely populated with other minority group members. Conversely, we suggest that when minority group members live in neighborhoods patterned with majority group faces (as is so often the case), contact will be less transformative. We test this assumption using a large sample of both New Zealander minority (Māori; N = 925) and majority (European; N = 3805) group members. In line with predictions, Māori who lived in minority dense neighborhoods showed the traditional association between contact and increased warmth towards New Zealander Europeans. This relationship, however, was weak or non-existent when they lived in primarily European neighborhoods. Contact effects in majority group members were unaffected by neighborhood composition. The interaction held when controlling for, and was not explained by: gender, income, experiences of harm, cognitions of race-based rejection, or realistic threat. We provide the first evidence to suggest that when it comes to minority group members' intergroup attitudes, contact with majority group members may be a relatively ineffective predictor unless the “wallpaper” of their lives is minority-dense. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3859597 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-38595972013-12-13 The Wallpaper Effect: The Contact Hypothesis Fails for Minority Group Members Who Live in Areas with a High Proportion of Majority Group Members Barlow, Fiona Kate Hornsey, Matthew J. Thai, Michael Sengupta, Nikhil K. Sibley, Chris G. PLoS One Research Article We aim to provide one explanation for why the link between contact and prejudice is consistently less strong for minority group members than it is for majority group members. Specifically, we propose a “wallpaper effect” such that contact works to increase minority group members' positivity towards majority groups when they live in areas densely populated with other minority group members. Conversely, we suggest that when minority group members live in neighborhoods patterned with majority group faces (as is so often the case), contact will be less transformative. We test this assumption using a large sample of both New Zealander minority (Māori; N = 925) and majority (European; N = 3805) group members. In line with predictions, Māori who lived in minority dense neighborhoods showed the traditional association between contact and increased warmth towards New Zealander Europeans. This relationship, however, was weak or non-existent when they lived in primarily European neighborhoods. Contact effects in majority group members were unaffected by neighborhood composition. The interaction held when controlling for, and was not explained by: gender, income, experiences of harm, cognitions of race-based rejection, or realistic threat. We provide the first evidence to suggest that when it comes to minority group members' intergroup attitudes, contact with majority group members may be a relatively ineffective predictor unless the “wallpaper” of their lives is minority-dense. Public Library of Science 2013-12-11 /pmc/articles/PMC3859597/ /pubmed/24349227 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0082228 Text en © 2013 Barlow et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Barlow, Fiona Kate Hornsey, Matthew J. Thai, Michael Sengupta, Nikhil K. Sibley, Chris G. The Wallpaper Effect: The Contact Hypothesis Fails for Minority Group Members Who Live in Areas with a High Proportion of Majority Group Members |
title | The Wallpaper Effect: The Contact Hypothesis Fails for Minority Group Members Who Live in Areas with a High Proportion of Majority Group Members |
title_full | The Wallpaper Effect: The Contact Hypothesis Fails for Minority Group Members Who Live in Areas with a High Proportion of Majority Group Members |
title_fullStr | The Wallpaper Effect: The Contact Hypothesis Fails for Minority Group Members Who Live in Areas with a High Proportion of Majority Group Members |
title_full_unstemmed | The Wallpaper Effect: The Contact Hypothesis Fails for Minority Group Members Who Live in Areas with a High Proportion of Majority Group Members |
title_short | The Wallpaper Effect: The Contact Hypothesis Fails for Minority Group Members Who Live in Areas with a High Proportion of Majority Group Members |
title_sort | wallpaper effect: the contact hypothesis fails for minority group members who live in areas with a high proportion of majority group members |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3859597/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24349227 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0082228 |
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