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ABSTRACT
Allport’s Theory of Interpersonal Contact suggests that coming into contact with a member of an outgroup should increase support for that outgroup. Previous studies find mixed results when applying Allport’s theory to reported contact with transgender people. We posit that this is due to imprecise and aggregated measures of contact and a lack of attention to the differences between contact that is ephemeral or ongoing and voluntary or obligatory. We explore our theories with data from a large, high-quality survey conducted in early 2020. We find that while various forms of contact (including voluntary and obligatory) predict warmer ratings on feeling thermometers, only close personal friendships—contact that is voluntary and ongoing—predicts attitudes toward transgender-inclusive policies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. The 2020 ANES Exploratory Testing Survey only measured gender as male or female. We are thus unable to identify or exclude any transgender respondents. Additional information about the survey is available at https://electionstudies.org.
2. We investigated whether there was a statistically significant difference between the two types of questions and support, where our single measure of combined troop support is the dependent variable, and the form of the question (either A or B) is the independent variable. There is no meaningful difference between the two forms on support. The averages are quite close (0.684 and 0.691).
3. Furthermore, we run an additional analysis that controls for the version of troop support question that the respondent received and found no meaningful difference between the models. This is the case for both .