Does Belief in Different Representations of the Christian God Predict Attitudes and Tolerance Toward Muslims?
Kapelles, T. (Australian Catholic University), Anderson, J. (Australian Catholic University), de la Piedad Garcia, X. (Australian Catholic University), Kaufmann, L. (Australian Catholic University)
The current study sought to determine whether Christians’ religious belief in specific representations of God (i.e., as either benevolent or authoritarian) can differentially predict outcomes toward Muslims. Christian participants (N = 205) were asked to report their belief in the representation of God, before responding to a measure of attitudes and tolerance toward Muslims. Benevolent God belief was found to predict positive attitudes and tolerance toward the group, whereas Authoritarian God belief was not a significant predictor of either outcome. The findings suggest that belief in positive representations of God (i.e., as benevolent) can help promote positive inter-religious outcomes.
Do Bisexuals Have a Bisexual Viewing Pattern? It Depends on How you Analyze your Data
Morandini, J. (University of Sydney), Spence, B. (University of New England), Dar-Nimrod, I. (University of Sydney), Lykins, A. (University of New England)
Eye-tracking was used to examine whether bisexual identified men and women viewed male and female erotic stimuli differently from heterosexual and gay/lesbian identified men and women. When using analysis capable of differentiating true bisexual responses from averaging effects, bisexual men, but not bisexual women, demonstrated a unique “bisexual” controlled attention pattern (which was intermediate between that observed in gay and straight men), and neither bisexual men nor women demonstrated a unique “bisexual” pattern of initial attention. Our findings provided mixed evidence for the existence of a unique visual attention profile in bisexual men and women.
Perceived Outgroup Entitativity as a Moderator of Intergroup Contact Effects
Neji, S. (FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany), Hewstone, M. (University of Oxford, UK), Kenworthy, J. B. (University of Texas at Arlington, USA), Christ, O. (FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany)
Entitativity influences the information processing and the transference of traits from one group member to other group members. We suggest that perceiving a group as highly entitative facilitates the generalisation of information and the contact experiences with an individual outgroup member is more likely to generalise to the general outgroup. We confirmed our assumptions in two cross-sectional studies (random sample, N = 884; online-survey, N = 238) and one experiment (3 [entitativity: high vs. low vs. control] x 2 [contact: positive vs. negative] between-subject design, N = 330). The generalisation of positive contact was significantly stronger for high entitative outgroups.
When do Straight Men Express Compassion for Gay Victims of Hate Crime?
Owuamalam, C. (University of Nottingham, Malaysia), Matos, A. S. (University of Nottingham, Malaysia), Wong, R. (University of Nottingham, Malaysia)
Compassionate feelings for those victimised on the basis of their perceived sexual deviance (e.g., gay men) may be incompatible with support for heteronormative sexual conduct amongst straight men. But, indifference to their plight could raise concern over one’s gay-tolerance credentials. In two experiments (N=501), we found that straight men were indifferent towards gay victims of hate crime only when the potential for social evaluation was high, especially when bystander reactions were passive (rather than active). In contrast, straight men expressed greater compassion towards gay victims when encouraged to repress evaluative biases, and this effect occurred also in the passive bystander condition, but only when they could gauge that the victims were not receiving the needed support.
Towards an Integrated Taxonomy of Motivations to Engage or Disengage in Intergroup Contact
Saeedian, Y. (The University of Newcastle), Paolini, S. (The University of Newcastle), Kalokerinos, E. K. (The University of Newcastle), Hewstone, M. (The University of Newcastle, Oxford University, UK)
The purpose of this theoretical paper was to synthesize research on intergroup contact motivations and emotion regulation in intergroup contact, and to advance an integrated taxonomy. First, we reviewed theories and research on motivation for intergroup contact. Second, we used Tamir’s (2016) taxonomy of motives in emotion regulation as a broad organising framework to classify different types of intergroup motivations. Finally, we used this integrated platform to advance novel hypotheses about motivational and emotional processes during intergroup contact. We expect our taxonomy to provide a more complete framework to guide future empirical research on contact seeking.
Prejudice Reduction: A Systematic Review of Field Experiments
Hsieh, W. (Monash University)
Changes in social, economic, and cultural life resulting from rising migration are associated with increases in harmful attitudes and action against particular immigrant groups in many cities and neighbourhoods. Thus, it is important to understand what works in reducing prejudice in the wider community. This paper systematically reviewed field experiments from the past ten years to identify prejudice reduction interventions where causal inference is possible and test conditions represent ‘real life’ scenarios. The review revealed the most efficacious approaches to reducing negative attitudes towards immigrants and highlighted areas requiring further research.