Can intergroup contact on social media improve intergroup relations? Developing and testing a longitudinal intergroup contact field intervention on social media.

Abstract

Intergroup contact may be the best known tool for reducing prejudice and improving intergroup relations. Yet, challenges inherent to studying and applying it hold the field back from answering basic questions about it definitively and undermine its applied readiness. We propose that using social media to study intergroup contact may help push contact research forward to applied readiness and help us to better understand intergroup contact itself. To do so, we present three studies totaling 4,621 observations from 646 participants and drawing on observations of 193,225 social media users that develop and test a social media-based intergroup contact intervention to reduce prejudice. We found that intergroup contact on social media was associated with less prejudice and more positive intergroup behavior cross-sectionally and longitudinally, but we did not find that manipulating the racial demographics of accounts posting to participants' real Twitter feeds had a causal effect on their intergroup attitudes or behaviors. These results suggest that although social media contexts may be fertile ground for studying and applying intergroup contact, we do not yet have evidence for an effect that is causal in nature. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).