Enhancing intergroup relationship between local and mainland college students in Hong Kong – an intensive contact-based intervention

Abstract

This study examined the efficacy of an intensive one-day intergroup contact intervention for two groups under tension: local and mainland Chinese college students in Hong Kong. The differential effects of contact intimacy at cognitive, interpersonal, and emotional levels in fostering changes in knowledge, attitude, and behavior were evaluated. Adopting a two-arm Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) design, participants (N = 72) were randomly assigned to the intervention group that facilitated progressively higher levels of contact intimacy, or the control group that had limited level of contact intimacy. The results support the short-term intervention efficacy in enhancing outgroup knowledge, attitude, and behavior, with Cohen’s d of 0.97, 0.60 and 0.30, respectively. Specifically, cognitive-level intergroup contact enhanced outgroup knowledge only. Adding interpersonal-level intergroup contact further enhanced outgroup attitude. Notably, adding emotional-level intergroup contact enhanced changes in all three domains: knowledge, attitude, and behavior. One-month maintenance effect was found in outgroup knowledge, with Cohen’s d increased to 1.33. Keywords: Contact intimacy, Hong Kong, mainland, students, intergroup relationship, outgroup knowledge, outgroup attitude, outgroup intended behavior