The dynamic relationship between contact opportunities, positive and negative intergroup contact, and prejudice: A...

We investigated the dynamics of naturally increasing contact opportunities, frequencies of positive and negative intergroup contact experiences, and prejudice toward forced migrants, in 2 three-wave longitudinal studies (Study 1, N = 183, adult community sample; Study 2, N = 758, nation-wide adult probability sample) in Germany using latent growth curve and parallel process analyses. We examined (research question 1) whether prejudice increases or decreases with increased contact opportunities; (research question 2) whether the rate of change in prejudice is related to the rate of change of positive/negative contact; (research question 3) whether the trajectories of change in prejudice shift as a function of the histories of prior positive/negative contact; and (research question 4) whether the rate of change in positive/negative contact frequencies depends on prior prejudice levels. Across both studies, prejudice increased with increased contact opportunities, as did positive and negative contact frequencies (ad research question 1). Whereas changes in negative contact were significantly related to changes in prejudice in both studies, no such relationships emerged as significant for positive contact (ad research question 2). We did not find any supportive evidence for our research questions 3 and 4. Overall, our results demonstrate that increased contact opportunities can contribute to increases in prejudice. Moreover, they indicate that the trajectories of negative contact and prejudice may be more substantially intertwined than the trajectories of positive contact and prejudice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).