Contact, personality, and the secondary transfer effect

Although here is an emergent literature showing that personality and intergroup contact interact, much less work has been conducted on the reciprocal relationship between the two types of constructs. We present two longitudinal studies aimed at showing that contact and personality are in a reciprocal relationship, and that changes in personality can be a key process allowing secondary transfer effects, that is generalization of contact effects to outgroups not directly involved in contact. In both studies, participants were Italian high-school students, who answered questionnaires concerning relations with immigrants. In the first 2-wave study, participants (N = 387) were administered a questionnaire at the beginning and at the end of the school year. Results revealed a bi-directional relationship between cross-group friendships and social dominance orientation, but no evidence that contact influenced dispositional empathy (empathic concern, perspective taking) over time. In the second 3-way study, participants (N = 442) were administered a questionnaire at the beginning and end of the school year, and again at the end of the following school year. Results revealed that quality of contact at T1 was associated with agreeableness at T2, which in turn was associated with more positive attitudes toward immigrants and toward an unrelated outgroup (gay people) collected at T3. In conclusion, contact shapes personality, which contributes explain generalization of contact effects.