Fraternizing with the enemy: Intragroup effects of extended contact

Abstract

Extended contact (i.e., knowledge that an ingroup member has a close relationship with an outgroup member) often improves relations between groups. In the current research, we argue that such contact can also undermine relations within groups. Specifically, we propose a “fraternizing with the enemy” effect in which the fraternizer is viewed negatively by other ingroup members. In five preregistered experiments ( N = 2,035), we tested this effect in the context of political conflict using both real-world (Study 1) and fictitious (Studies 2–5) ingroup and outgroup members. Our results indicated that the fraternizer (vs. nonfraternizer) was viewed as less ideologically aligned with the ingroup, which in turn led to perceptions of this person as ambiguous and disloyal to the ingroup, and thereby elicited negative attitudes toward the fraternizer. We also found that, besides producing these negative effects, fraternizing with the enemy also produced the positive intergroup effects typically elicited by extended contact. We discuss the potential implications of our results for the effectiveness of extended contact in bridging political divides.