Intergroup Contact  And Social Change

Intergroup Contact and Social Change For this assignment, I decided to review an article from The Journal of Social Issues. The name of the article is, “How Does Intergroup Contact Affect Social Change? It’s Impact on Collective Action and Individual Mobility Intentions among Members of a Disadvantaged Group”. The authors of this study were Nicole Tausch of University of St. Andrews, Tamar Saguy of IDC Herzliya, and Jeff Bryson of San Diego State University. This study examines how intragroup contact affects social change, specifically, “how positive contact with members of the advantaged group shapes action strategies to cope with disadvantage”.

The researchers explicitly state that the goal of this study is to “extend previous work by examining the potential role of contact in motivating an additional action strategy that members of subordinate groups can engage in order to deal with disadvantage: individual mobility.”

This is defined as “pursuit of actions that serve the improvement of one’s personal position rather than that of the group as a whole.

” The researchers presented many theories and past writings, such as Social Identity Theory, which states that individual mobility is more likely to be sought by someone who perceives the existing social structure as “flexible and permeable”. These previous studies are utilized to support their own theory that “positive contact with members of the advantaged group may foster such a belief system and promote individualistic strategies amongst members of disadvantaged groups”. The researchers examined several factors and made many predictions on outcomes of the study but the primary hypothesis was that, “positive contact with the advantaged group will be positively associated with individual mobility orientation and that they expect this link to be mediated by an increased belief” in one’s personal ability to advance as an individual within social constructs, as it pertains to “perceived boundary permeability.

Get quality help now

WriterBelle

Verified

Proficient in: Social Change

4.7 (657)

“ Really polite, and a great writer! Task done as described and better, responded to all my questions promptly too! ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

”

Additionally, the researchers made the following predictions for this study: That “an individual mobility orientation negatively predicts collective action intentions”, “contact came to be associated with reduced awareness of their disadvantage”, “awareness of disadvantage to be positively associated with collective action intentions via its effect on anger”, “identification to be positively associated with both anger and collective action intentions and to be a negative predictor of individual mobility”, and lastly, that “positive attitudes toward the advantaged group to reduce interest in collective action by reducing anger about ingroup disadvantage”. Ultimately, the general statements about the outcomes of this study were that friendship contact with “Anglo-whites was negatively associated with interests in collective action”.

They associated this with two reasons regarding this outcome. One was “reduced identification with the disadvantaged group” and the other was “positive perceptions of the advantaged group” which predicted reduced anger about inequality. Furthermore, a positive association was revealed in relation to a person’s “individual mobility orientation” which according to the researchers could be explained through perception of increased permeability. They added that in this study individual mobility orientation was not a predictor of reduced motivation for collective actions. In terms of methodology, the researchers collected survey data from 112 Latino Americans, 30 males, 81 females, and 1 of unknown gender using structural equation modeling. The average age of the subjects was 20.57. California University students were invited to participate in an online survey questionnaire related to interethnic relations in the US in exchange for partial course credit.

The background variables were as follows: gender, age, socioeconomic status (determined by a three-item assessment, specific to their own subjective assessment based on a scale from lower to upper class), and parents level of education. Standardization and averaging were used to yield an index of respondent’s socioeconomic status background. Additionally, three items were included to assess the occurrences and quality of positive contact each of the respondents had with Anglo-whites (i.e., how many of their closest friends were anglo-white and how often they visited each other’s homes). Once more these items were standardized and then averaged to yield an index of “friendship contact”. It is notable that there are many mentions of various changing of methods, measurements, and formulas to find ‘a best fit’ for measuring the data. One such mention was that previous guidance by two different approaches for decades – led them to include simultaneously this two-pathway approach.

Both seem to implicate the same outcome: One fosters belief in said mobility and the other weakens psychological attributes of collective action associated with negative views that keep them bound to collective action. Outgroup parameters were determined by a thermometer scaling in order to reveal the level of warmth toward anglo-white friends. Ingroup parameters were determined by four items that specifically questioned and allowed for rating of their level of identification (from strongly disagree to strongly agree) with their ethnic group by asking them to rate statements; such as, “belonging to my group is an important part of who I am” and “I identify with other people from my own group”. Appraisal of “Ingroup Disadvantage” was rated based on answer to the question of whether they believed Latinos in the US were disadvantaged.

The researchers also used scales to determine levels of anger based on this same question. “Perceived Permeability” was scaled based on personal level on advancement. In order to assess “individual mobility intentions”, a Likert scale was used to indicate how likely the respondents were to create connections with people who hold power in society, move to neighborhoods with more job opportunities, and work hard to advance themselves. The Likert scale given went from not at all to extremely likely. “Collective action intentions” were essentially measured based on what behaviors they would engage in to improve the status of Latino Americans in the US. The results revealed that “friendship contact with Anglo-Whites was overall negatively associated with collective action due to positive attitudes towards the advantaged group being Anglo-Whites and reduced identification with the disadvantaged group being Latino-Americans.

Additionally, the results indicated as in that contact was positively associated with perception of mobility, which in turn predicted individual mobility intentions. The results indicated that there was no significant relationship between identification, individual mobility, and that mobility intentions did not predict collective action. In a replication of prior work, contact was positively associated with outgroup attitudes and negatively associated with identification. In addition to the other findings, one result that was unexpected was that there was no significant association between contact and disadvantage appraisal discovered. Furthermore, that identification did not predict anger. One expected result was that the disadvantage appraisal was a positive predictor of anger and more positive attitudes towards Anglo-Whites predicted less anger. Finally, collective action intentions were positively predicted by awareness of disadvantage and identification.

The researchers’ primary hypothesis in this study was confirmed. The relationship between contact and individual mobility orientation were confirmed. It was plainly stated that this is the first “empirical evidence that positive contact is positively associated with individual mobility”. Concluding that having “positive personal interpersonal relations with members of the advantaged group can indeed increase the motivation to advance individually among members of the disadvantaged group”. Contrary to their expectations, there was no significant relation between individual mobility and collective action intentions. Thus, indicating at least in this particular study that “striving for individual advancement among advantaged group is not associated with reduced willingness to get engaged on behalf of one’s group”.

In essence, the researchers state that they sought and were able to replicate some prior research outcomes; such as, collective action tendencies via reduced identification, a work of Wright and Lubensky in 2009 and Van Zomeren et al., in 2008, that reflected a diminished willingness to engage in actions that would benefit Latino Americans as a group. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, they affirm that their findings as expected confirmed that positive outgroup attitudes negatively predict anger about disadvantage, a significant predictor of collective action intentions, consistent with the idea that positive outgroup attitudes created through pleasant interactions with members of the advantaged group are likely to create an ambiguity about who is to blame for the ingroup’s disadvantage. Thereby, “inhibiting adversarial emotions and action tendencies”