Contact in Everyday Environments: A Regional Perspective on Intergroup Contact and Bias

Most intergroup contact is brief and superficial and occurs in everyday environments – two random people are more likely to share a public space than they are to have a deep and meaningful conversation. Yet, most previous intergroup contact research has either focused on contact in artificial settings or on self-reported contact. This study presents the first large-scale investigation of how naturalistic contact in everyday environments relates to racial bias across the United States. In Study 1, we used large-scale geographical databases on neighbourhood characteristics that provide opportunity for intergroup contact and attitude data from 1.3 million people to show that counties with more opportunity have lower levels of implicit racial bias. In Study 2, we used human GPS data from 9.6 million people and large-scale attitude data to demonstrate that counties with less SES exposure segregation – indicating more intergroup contact – have lower levels of implicit racial bias. These findings suggest that even superficial, everyday contact is associated with reductions in implicit racial bias, and highlight the importance of considering the role of everyday environments in intergroup contact and intergroup biases.