Quality contact curbs conspiracy beliefs

Intergroup contact — interactions between members of different social groups — is often posited as a way of reducing discrimination, particularly in young people. Emerging research, however, suggests that intergroup contact can do more than reduce discrimination. 

In a new study, published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, a team from the universities of Nottingham and East Anglia explore the impact of positive intergroup contact on conspiracy beliefs. Their study reveals that high quality contact with marginalised communities predicted lower belief in conspiracy theories about those communities. This, alongside other efforts to understand belief in conspiracies, could help provide a tactic for reducing harmful beliefs. 

In the first study, 287 British participants (recruited online via university portals and Prolific) were asked about the quantity and quality of their contact with immigrants. Participants answered a question on how many immigrants they knew, as well as their experience with these contacts, then indicated whether their relationship(s) with their immigrant contact(s) could be described as: superficial or deep, natural or forced, unpleasant or pleasant, competitive or cooperative, and intimate or distant. 

Next, they answered questions to measure their feelings and beliefs towards immigrants, indicating how much they agreed with statements such as "discrimination against immigrants is no longer a problem." Their thinking styles were also measured here, looking at whether participants were more likely to make judgements on intuition and feeling or using "deliberative and logical reasoning." 

Finally, their belief in conspiracy theories about immigrants were measured. Participants were presented with five statements related to immigrant conspiracy theories, such as "immigrants are often involved in secret plots and schemes," and statements related to general conspiratorial thinking, such as "I think that the official version of the events given by the authorities very often hides the truth." 

Through their analyses, the team found that high-quality contact (i.e. deep, natural, or pleasant contact) with immigrants was positively associated with lower belief in conspiracy theories about this group. This effect even extended beyond immigrant-relevant conspiracies, as the team also found some evidence linking higher quality intergroup contact to lower conspiracy theory beliefs in general. However, the amount of contact participants had with immigrants did not impact their belief in immigrant conspiracy theories, indicating that the quality of contact is the key driver. 

The second study sought to replicate the findings of the first, this time focusing on conspiracies about Jewish people. The method of this study was largely the same as the first, with measures adapted to probe belief in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, conspiracy theories more generally, and measures of prejudice against Jewish people. 

Similar to the initial study, positive contact with Jewish people was also associated with a reduction in outgroup conspiracy theories, as well as with general conspiracy thinking. Unfortunately, negative contact had the opposite effect — if people reported negative contact experiences with Jewish people, they were also likely to report more conspiratorial thinking both generally and towards this population. As in the first study, however, the results were correlational. A third study sought to explore causal mechanisms. 

A total of 214 non-Jewish, UK-based participants were randomly assigned to two conditions: the imagined contact condition and a control condition. In the imagined contact condition, participants were asked to imagine meeting a Jewish stranger for the first time, thinking carefully and when and where this would happen. They were then asked to imagine finding out some unexpected and interesting things about the person in a "positive, relaxed, and comfortable" encounter. Those in the control condition completed an identical task, but read only that they had met a stranger. 

Belief in Jewish conspiracy theories was then measured using participants' level of agreement with twelve statements relating to common anti-Semitic conspiracies. They also rated themselves on scales from cold to warm, suspicious to trusting, positive to negative, friendly to hostile, and admiration to disgust. 

The results found that those who were asked to imagine a positive interaction with a Jewish person rated Jewish people generally more positively — they also indicated lower belief in Jewish conspiracy beliefs, providing causal evidence for the power of intergroup contact in reducing racist conspiracy theories. 

The study suggests that imagined contact, while likely not be as powerful as direct contact, may be useful when "opportunities for contact are scarce or in high-prejudice environments where direct contact [is] risky." How well this would work on those who are prone to imagining harmful stereotypes, such as those deeply embedded in conspiratorial communities, is not clear. Further research investigating and refining this technique does, however, have the potential to lead to the development of low-cost, relatively low-effort interventions that put people on a path to beliefs more grounded in reality. 

Read the paper in full: https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2973