Does Intergroup Contact Affect Political Attitudes and Behaviours?—A Longitudinal Test of Tertiary Transfer Effects Using the Chilean Longitudinal Social Survey (ELSOC)

Abstract

Intergroup contact has been known to not only affect attitudes towards contacted and non-contacted outgroups, but also to affect people's open and liberal thinking, which in turn affects a variety of human experiences, cognitions and behaviours outside the intergroup dimension (called tertiary transfer effect, TTE). This manuscript explores one suggested TTE of intergroup contact affecting political attitudes and behaviours mediated via intergroup ideologies in a multiverse approach combining several intergroup contact, intergroup ideologies and political attitudes and behaviours indicators. We used three waves of the Chilean Longitudinal Social Survey (ELSOC, N = 2863). Using random-intercept cross-lagged panel models, we found numerous stable between-person associations between intergroup contact, intergroup ideologies and political attitudes and behaviours, but we did not find consistent longitudinal evidence supporting the investigated TTE on a within-person level. However, we did find isolated longitudinal effects of negative intergroup contact frequency predicting preference for social equality and outgroup liking on a within-person level, which we advise to interpret with caution (due to, e.g., overall very low frequency of contact in the analysed dataset). We contextualise our findings in the existing literature and provide suggestions for future research to investigate the causal processes proposed to underlie TTEs. Please refer to the Supporting Information section to find this article's community and social impact statement.