THE INTERGROUP CONTACT HYPOTHESIS AND MAJORITY MEMBERS' NEGATIVE STEREOTYPING

Empirical tests of the so-called intergroup contact hypothesis are remarkably rare in a Scandinavian context. This hypothesis posits that personal contact with ethnic minority members renders majority members less hostile towards the entire ethnic minority group. Specifically, majority members who interact with minority members are less inclined to accept negative stereotyping of ethnic minority members. Unlike most previous intergroup contact research, this paper examines neighborhood contact as this measure reduces self-selection bias and increases social coverage. Empirical analysis shows that neighborhood contact reduces majority members' negative stereotyping. Additionally, it includes a bootstrap test of two key mediators of the contact stereotype relationship. Consistent with previous research, this test shows that anxiety and empathy are both statistically significant mediators. In fact, when anxiety and empathy are controlled the neighborhood contact stereotype relationship disappears. Thus, neighborhood contact triggers important affective ties between the participants which in turn stimulate differentiated thinking about ethnic minority members. The empirical tests were performed on a Danish national probability sample from 2009 (N = 1,928).