Creating positive out-group attitudes through intergroup couple friendships and implications for compassionate lovePosted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology on 2014-06-23 02:34Z by Steven |
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
Published online before print: 2014-02-10
DOI: 10.1177/0265407514522369
Keith M. Welker
Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
Richard B. Slatcher, Associate Professor of Psychology
Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
Lynzey Baker
Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
Arthur Aron, Professor of Psychology
State University of New York, Stony Brook
Building personal relationships with out-group members is an important catalyst of positive intergroup attitudes. In a 2 × 2 experimental design, Caucasian and African American individuals and couples were randomly assigned to interact in either cross-race or same-race individual dyads and couple pairs. Participants completed pretest measures of race attitudes and engaged in a high self-disclosure closeness-induction task with an in-group or out-group race member in pairs of couples or individuals and completed measures of self-disclosure and intergroup attitudes. These results suggest that intergroup contact in the presence of romantic partners may be particularly effective for improving intergroup attitudes. We explore the implications of these results for developing compassionate love toward out-groups.
Read the entire article here.