Does multicultural personality moderate the relationship between cross-group friendship and allophilia?

ABSTRACT

Contact research has well documented the beneficial effects of cross-group interactions in general, and friendship potential in particular, in promoting positive attitudes toward outgroups. Yet, most of the studies to date have mainly focused on reducing negative attitudes and prejudice. Extending emerging attempts in social and psychological research to understand positive outgroup orientations, the present study aimed to investigate the relationship between cross-group friendship and allophilia (i.e., positive outgroup attitudes) in a sample of 406 American undergraduates. The study also examined whether individual differences in multicultural personality play a moderating role in this relationship. Findings revealed that cross-group friendship was positively associated with allophilia, and that the relationship was stronger for individuals who scored low on open-mindedness and high on social initiative. The present study highlights the important role of multicultural personality in the linkage between close cross-group interactions and positive outgroup attitudes.

KEYWORDS:

• Cross-group friendship
• allophilia
• intergroup contact
• positive outgroup attitudes
• multicultural personality

Acknowledgments

This study was conducted as part of the author's research work, supported by a fellowship from Fulbright Faculty Development Program. The author would like to thank Prof. Shelia Kennison (Oklahoma State University) for her help in collecting the data and comments at earlier stages of the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Post-hoc probing revealed that when analyzing only the interaction cross-group friendship × social initiative (while also controlling for gender and including social initiative and cross-group friendship as predictors), the term was non-significantly (positively) related to allophilic attitudes (β = .03, p = .47, 95% CI [−.09, .19]). However, the interaction cross-group friendship × social initiative turned out to have a significant negative relation with allophilia when adding the interaction cross-group friendship × open-mindedness to the model. Following the procedures outlined by Paulhus et al. (2004), a Sobel test was computed to analyze the significance of the suppression effect. The analysis revealed that the suppression effect was non-significant (Z = .56, p = .57).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Liliia Korol

Liliia Korol is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the Department of Intercultural Communication in the National University of Ostroh Academy (Ostroh, Ukraine). She received her Ph.D in Developmental and Educational Psychology in 2011. She is an author of two books and more than 20 research papers published in field of social sciences. Her research interests concern inter-ethnic relations and inter-ethnic attitudes, including tolerance, prejudice, and discrimination towards immigrants and ethnic minority groups. She is also interested in the psychosocial adjustment and integration of youth with an immigrant background into the mainstream society.