Two degrees of separation: A longitudinal study of actual and perceived extended international contact

Extended contact theory proposes that knowledge of ingroup-outgroup friendships leads to reductions of intergroup bias by reducing ignorance about the outgroup and intergroup anxiety, and by increasing awareness of positive outgroup exemplars (e.g., observation of friendly behavior towards an ingroup member), and inclusion of other in the self. Over a one-year period we examined extended contact among home country friends of international students who had direct contact with British people through their study period in Britain. This provides a stringent test of extended contact theory, both due to the longitudinal design, and the inclusion of both actual and perceived naturally arising extended contact. As predicted by extended contact theory, increases in extended contact over time predicted all variables but intergroup anxiety. There was also some evidence for (weaker) reversed causal influence between prejudice and other variables. Importantly, the quality of contact experienced by the direct contact sample (international students) predicted all dependent measures in the matched extended contact sample in their home countries. Results are discussed in terms of the promise of extended contact theory for intergroup relations.