OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
How does ingroup-outgroup contact reduce social and even political polarization? Despite the large number of studies on the well-known contact hypothesis, the current literature lacks experimental field evidence or even behavioral results. In this project, I examine this connection in an online environment, a venue where polarizations are particularly extreme. In collaboration with a non-governmental organization, English-speaking participants are randomly assigned to brief Zoom conversations with a person from a socially stigmatized group. The conversation will focus on one group membership, e.g., being Jewish, but other prejudiced group memberships may be indirectly reduced (e.g., female versus male Jews). The research component aims to examine how this contact intervention reduces prejudice by examining mechanisms of group identification, empathy, and a time-lagged measure of behavior change.