Strengthening Purity: Moral Purity as a Mediator of Direct and Extended Cross-Group Friendships on Sexual Prejudice

ABSTRACT

The present research investigated whether enhanced perceptions of moral purity drive the effects of intergroup cross-group friendships on the intentions to interact with homosexuals. High-school students (N = 639) reported their direct and extended cross-group friendships with homosexuals as well as their beliefs regarding the moral character of the sexual minority. Participants further reported their desire to interact with homosexuals in the future. Results showed that both face-to-face encounters and extended contact with homosexuals increased their perceived moral purity, which in turn fostered more positive behavioral intentions. Results further revealed the specific role of moral purity in this sense, as differential perceptions along other moral domains (autonomy and community) had no mediation effects on behavioral tendencies toward homosexuals. The importance of these findings for improving intergroup relations is discussed, together with the importance of integrating research on intergroup contact and morality.

KEYWORDS:

• Extended contact
• homosexuals
• indirect contact
• intergroup contact
• intergroup relations
• morality
• moral purity
• prejudice

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Institutes Blaise Pascal, Einaudi, Filippo Re, Ipsia Lombardini, Motti, Scaruffi Levi Tricolore, for their collaboration and for allowing us to collect data. We also wish to thank the students enrolled in educational academic courses at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia who helped with data collection and coding.

Author contributions: M. Brambilla and L. Vezzali conceived the study idea. L Vezzali ran the study. M Brambilla and L. Vezzali conducted the data analysis. The first two authors drafted the first version of the manuscript, while D. Giovannini and F. P. Colucci read and commented on it.

Notes

^1. Traits were selected on the basis of a pretest. Specifically, 26 students (not involved in the main study) were asked to rate 45 traits on their autonomy-, community-, and purity-relatedness. For each trait, participants indicated which aspect of morality was more appropriate (for a similar procedure, see Rozin et al., 1999). Definition for each moral domain was provided. For moral autonomy, we selected two items for which the score on the autonomy-relatedness (M = 0.71, SE = 0.07) was higher than that on the community-relatedness (M = 0.36, SE = 0.07) and on the purity-relatedness (M = 0.14, SE = 0.06), p < .001. For community, we considered two items for which the score on the community-relatedness (M = 0.82, SE = 0.04) was higher than that on the autonomy-relatedness (M = 0.32, SE = 0.07) and on the purity-relatedness (M = 0.07, SE = 0.04), p < .001. For purity, we included two items for which the score on the purity-relatedness (M = 0.84, SE = 0.06) was higher than that on the autonomy-relatedness (M = 0.19, SE = 0.05) and on the community-relatedness (M = 0.03, SE = 0.02), p < .001. A second group of 40 students evaluated the global favorability of the selected traits using a scale ranging from −5 (very unfavorable) to 0 (neutral) to 5 (very favorable). Results showed that purity traits were rated as less positive (M = 1.01, SE = 0.18) than autonomy (M = 3.92, SE = 0.17) and community items (M = 3.88, SE = 0.18), p < .001. Although these findings showed that traits differed on valence, they also rule out the alternative explanation that the hypothesized effect might be due to a greater favorability of purity traits compared with the traits referred to other aspects of morality.