Contact ruptures: How ecological shifts reshape intergroup contact and outgroup attitudes

Intergroup contact is regarded as a powerful tool for reducing prejudice. However, recent research has questioned the ability of naturalistic contact to produce true within-person attitude change-that is, shifts in an individual's attitudes over time. Much of this work has focused on minor variations in routine intergroup contact, which may be too subtle to produce meaningful, lasting change. Conducted in the United Kingdom, this research explores two instances of "contact ruptures" wherein individuals undergo abrupt environmental changes that disrupt existing social networks and substantially alter their amount of intergroup contact, such as when starting university (Study 1, N = 429, four waves) or studying abroad (Study 2, N = 373, four waves). Using latent growth models, we found that both transitions led to significant and sustained step-level changes in levels of contact with people of different nationalities. Individuals experiencing larger postrupture increases in positive contact showed more favorable shifts in outgroup attitudes, while greater increases in negative contact coincided with greater declines in positive attitudes. Additionally, higher increases in intimate contact, but not casual contact, were associated with greater improvements in attitudes. Findings suggest that the traitlike stability observed in recent studies may stem not only from traitlike features of the individual but also from stable environments. Within-person attitude change is evident when people experience major shifts in contact. We argue that focusing on substantial changes, rather than day-to-day variations, better aligns with how contact effects were originally conceived of in Allport's classic contact theory (yet have not been routinely studied). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).