Effects of intergroup ideologies on willingness to engage in intergroup contact with essentialism as a mediator

Abstract

Various studies have found that merely interacting with an outgroup does not necessarily lead to better intergroup relations. The prejudice against Myanmar in Thailand is still an issue that needs solving. Therefore, cultures should be understood as an ongoing process in the hope that it would be more consistent with the current social environment and improve intergroup relations. The first study was a cross-sectional study that examined the self-reported scores of polyculturalism and the willingness to engage in intergroup contact with essentialism as a mediator. The online survey was distributed, and 112 high-school and university students were included in the analysis. The simple mediation analysis result yielded no significant indirect effect due to the non-significant relationship between polyculturalism and essentialism. The second study experimentally manipulated colorblindness, multiculturalism, and polyculturalism together with a control group. The online survey contained priming messages for each condition, along with the essentialism and the willingness to engage in intergroup contact scale. The final 200 high-school and university students were the samples of this study. The ANOVA results compared the willingness to engage in intergroup contact scores across groups. No significant difference was found. The multicategorical mediation analysis showed no significant indirect effect between the studied variables, except in the multiculturalism and polyculturalism pair, where both direct and indirect effects were statistically significant. The two studies shed light on which ideology would be best introduced to students and what to consider when developing appropriate media to promote better intergroup contact.