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 UK, this research explores two instances of ‘contact ruptures’ where 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, 4 waves) or studying abroad (Study 2, N = 373, 4 waves). Using latent growth models, we find both transitions led to significant and sustained step-level changes in levels of contact with people of different nationalities. Individuals experiencing larger post-rupture increases in positive contact showed more favourable 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 trait-like stability observed in recent studies may stem not only from trait-like 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).