The Effect Of Imagined Contact On Intergroup Threat

In the context of social groups, when members of a group perceive that an out-group is in a position to cause them harm, they will experience intergroup threat. This perceived threat will lead in-group members to produce negative group attitudes and behaviors. In recent years, how to decrease the perceived threat between the various groups, then to reduce the negative effects brought out by perceived threat, finally to promote friendly cooperation between the various groups, attracted more and more researchers’ attention.When perceiving threat, people will create a series of negative response in cognition, emotion and behavior, which will impact on the development of harmonious intergroup relationship. Canetti-Nisim.et.al demonstrated that intergroup threat to play a central role in fostering prejudice and perpetuating conflict (Canetti-Nisim, Ariely,&Halperin,2008; Stephan, Ybarra,&Morrison,2009; Maoz&McCauley,2009:Schmid et al.,2008; Tausch, Hewstone, Kenworthy, Cairns,&Christ,2007). Perceived intergroup threat is also thought of as a key negative intergroup stressor, which may bring about negative consequences for psychological well-being (Schmid&Muldoon,2013). Along with the understanding of negative effect leaded by perceived threat, more and more researchers focus on how to reduce perceived intergroup threat, and to improve intergroup relationship. Previous studies proved that intergroup contact could facilitate to fostering good intergroup relationship, for example, a different race or belief of students, living in the same dormitory is helpful for reducing intergroup prejudice. And actively attitudes toward different beliefs roommate will increased as the grade increased, this change was not affected by grouping (the experimenter randomly assigned or subjects voluntarily choose)(Shook&Fazio,2008). Although many researchers demonstrated that intergroup contact reduce intergroup bias, in real social context, actual contact is difficult to achieve in various group. Researchers began to pay more attention to imagine intergroup contact. Studies have shown that:just imagining has an interaction with outgroup member can also reduce the intergroup bias (Stathi&Crisp.2008). Imagine contact can increase positive evaluation toward outgroup; reduce the implicit biases; promote the future contact intention. However whether imagine contact impact the same on the key factors influencing the intergroup relations--intergroup threat? What are the possible influence factors? This is the purpose of this study.Based on the results of previous studies, researcher assumes that imagined intergroup contact can reduce perceived intergroup threat. This study used two experiments to verify the hypothesis. Two experiments were performed to China communicate with Japanese as imagination situation. In Experiment1, researcher took Chinese as participants, Japan as imagined contact target groups because of the history conflict between two countries, and then intergroup threat was measured, results demonstrated that:(1) experiencing standard imagined intergroup contact, subjects perceived threat significantly lower than the control group who did not imagine any mental imagery;(2) perceived similarity plays an mediated role in the relationship between the imagine contact intergroup threat. The second experiment, researchers have used elaborated imagined contact to verify the research hypothesis. In this research, elaborated imagined contact as the experimental condition, the standard imagined contact as the control group, to measure changes of perceived intergroup threat, results showed that:(1) elaborated imagined contact group subjects perceived intergroup threat level was significantly lower than the standard imagined contact group;(2) in the relationship of imagine contact-intergroup threat, perceived similarity plays an mediated role again.