Neuroscience
"I'm not a racist, many of my best friends are [insert ethnic minority identifier]" ... so goes the contemporary refrain. But how much does friendship really smooth inter-group interactions?
A wealth of research has shown that people typically feel more uncomfortable when dealing with someone from a different social group rather than someone from their own group. This can be for a range of reasons, including negative stereotypes, uncertainty about how they'll be evaluated or even fear that they'll be perceived as prejudiced. But little researched until now is the palliating effect of friendship on these kind of interactions. Now a US study led by Jonathan Cook has found that friendship removes the discomfort associated with interacting with someone of a different ethnicity, but fails to ameliorate all the anxieties associated with interacting with someone who has a different sexual orientation.
Sixty-four university and community participants used a handheld computer to record their social interactions for a week, including answering questions about how they felt, who they had met with and whether or not they were friends.
For White gay and lesbian participants and Black participants of all sexual persuasions, interacting with a person of a different ethnicity was less comfortable and provoked more negative feeling than interacting with someone of the same ethnicity. Unless, that is, the other person was a friend, in which case the discomfort and anxiety evaporated.
White, heterosexual participants actually felt no discomfort interacting with people of other ethnicities (perhaps because, in this study, they were mainly liberal students and always in the majority social group). If the other ethnically different person was a friend, the straight White person actually felt more comfortable than if interacting with a White friend! Perhaps, the researchers surmised, this was because "demonstrating that one is not prejudiced to a historically marginalised out-group ... [is] self-affirming and evidence of one's positive inter-ethnic attitudes."
It wasn't such good news for interactions between straight and gay people. Men (but not women) of either sexual orientation, still felt inhibited interacting with another person of the opposite sexual orientation, even if they were friends. This is consistent with past research showing that heterosexual women are more accepting of homosexuality than heterosexual men. "Heterosexual men who interact with gay men or lesbians may also fear they will be misclassified as gay," the researchers said. "For gay men, awareness that attitudes towards them are negative and that homosexuality is often seen as a violation of gender norms is the most likely explanation for continuing behavioural inhibition, even with friendship controlled," they added.
A more encouraging result in this regard, is that more prior contact with people of the opposite sexual orientation (another of the recorded measures) was associated with less negative feelings during new interactions of that kind.
"Our results offer several hopeful findings about the potential for comfortable social interactions with out-group members," Cook and his colleagues concluded. "When people make friends with others who have a different ethnic identity, friendship appears to largely convey the same interpersonal comfort experienced among in-group friends. Sexual orientation may entail more enduring barriers to comfortable inter-group interactions, particularly for males, but here too we found grounds for optimism."
_________________________________
Cook, J., Calcagno, J., Arrow, H., and Malle, B. (2011). Friendship trumps ethnicity (but not sexual orientation): Comfort and discomfort in inter-group interactions. British Journal of Social Psychology DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8309.2011.02051.x
Post written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Can friendship triumph over prejudice?
A wealth of research has shown that people typically feel more uncomfortable when dealing with someone from a different social group rather than someone from their own group. This can be for a range of reasons, including negative stereotypes, uncertainty about how they'll be evaluated or even fear that they'll be perceived as prejudiced. But little researched until now is the palliating effect of friendship on these kind of interactions. Now a US study led by Jonathan Cook has found that friendship removes the discomfort associated with interacting with someone of a different ethnicity, but fails to ameliorate all the anxieties associated with interacting with someone who has a different sexual orientation.
Sixty-four university and community participants used a handheld computer to record their social interactions for a week, including answering questions about how they felt, who they had met with and whether or not they were friends.
For White gay and lesbian participants and Black participants of all sexual persuasions, interacting with a person of a different ethnicity was less comfortable and provoked more negative feeling than interacting with someone of the same ethnicity. Unless, that is, the other person was a friend, in which case the discomfort and anxiety evaporated.
White, heterosexual participants actually felt no discomfort interacting with people of other ethnicities (perhaps because, in this study, they were mainly liberal students and always in the majority social group). If the other ethnically different person was a friend, the straight White person actually felt more comfortable than if interacting with a White friend! Perhaps, the researchers surmised, this was because "demonstrating that one is not prejudiced to a historically marginalised out-group ... [is] self-affirming and evidence of one's positive inter-ethnic attitudes."
It wasn't such good news for interactions between straight and gay people. Men (but not women) of either sexual orientation, still felt inhibited interacting with another person of the opposite sexual orientation, even if they were friends. This is consistent with past research showing that heterosexual women are more accepting of homosexuality than heterosexual men. "Heterosexual men who interact with gay men or lesbians may also fear they will be misclassified as gay," the researchers said. "For gay men, awareness that attitudes towards them are negative and that homosexuality is often seen as a violation of gender norms is the most likely explanation for continuing behavioural inhibition, even with friendship controlled," they added.
A more encouraging result in this regard, is that more prior contact with people of the opposite sexual orientation (another of the recorded measures) was associated with less negative feelings during new interactions of that kind.
"Our results offer several hopeful findings about the potential for comfortable social interactions with out-group members," Cook and his colleagues concluded. "When people make friends with others who have a different ethnic identity, friendship appears to largely convey the same interpersonal comfort experienced among in-group friends. Sexual orientation may entail more enduring barriers to comfortable inter-group interactions, particularly for males, but here too we found grounds for optimism."
_________________________________
Cook, J., Calcagno, J., Arrow, H., and Malle, B. (2011). Friendship trumps ethnicity (but not sexual orientation): Comfort and discomfort in inter-group interactions. British Journal of Social Psychology DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8309.2011.02051.xPost written by Christian Jarrett for the BPS Research Digest.
- Is Sexism The Reason Why So Many Heterosexual Men Are Prejudiced Towards Gay Men?
Gay rights have improved hugely in recent years, but prejudice remains a significant problem. Hate crime data from the US show that gay men in particular are victimised more than other sexual minorities and that their attackers are usually heterosexual...
- Just Good Friends? Attraction To Opposite-sex Friends Is Common And Burdensome
"Every platonic friend I got is some woman I was trying to ****, I made a wrong turn somewhere, and ended up in the friend zone. 'Oh no, I'm in the friend zone!'" Chris Rock.They were virtually unheard of for most of human history, but today,...
- When Gay Men Reveal Their Homosexuality Later In An Interaction, Prejudice Toward Them Is Reduced
Unlike other stigmatised groups, such as ethnic minorities or the elderly, people who are homosexual usually have the option of concealing their sexual identity when they interact with others. This raises an obvious question - does it make any difference...
- Why Marginalised Minorities May Be Wary Of Intergroup Contact
When people from different social groups mix, they generally come away with a more positive attitude towards the other social group. However, this benefit is not always symmetrical - people from a minority group are less likely to emerge with improved...
- No Room For Prejudice
Students’ racial prejudice is reduced when they share their university accommodation with roommates from a different ethnic group. Colette Van Laar at Leiden University in The Netherlands and her American colleagues measured the racial prejudice of...