On the spurious effect of intergroup friendship on outgroup attitudes in schools: The role of social influence and the positive impact of exposure to outgroup peers.

ABSTRACT: Promoting intergroup friendships in schools is regarded as a powerful strategy for improving outgroup attitudes. However, stochastic actor-oriented modelling (SAOM) studies have often revealed no association between intergroup friendship and outgroup attitudes. I investigated whether SAOM studies reported no effect of intergroup friendship on outgroup attitudes, what was responsible for this surprising finding and whether exposure to outgroup peers was positively related to outgroup attitudes. The meta-analysis of SAOM studies confirms no association between intergroup friendship and outgroup attitudes. Examining longitudinal social network data of 2700 German students, I found that a positive link between intergroup friendship and outgroup attitudes appeared only when I did not control fo

SUBMITTER: Zingora T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11923959 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature