ArticleThe British journal of social psychology2026
Experimental tests of the tertiary transfer effect of intergroup contact: Addressing valence, prototypicality and moderators.
Article in The British journal of social psychology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
Cognitive liberalization theory posits a tertiary transfer effect (TTE) whereby intergroup contact broadens open-minded cognitive dispositions. Across two pre-registered studies, we tested whether vicarious contact with Muslims (among non-Muslim Italians) influences abstract reasoning, convergent creativity, self-reported cognitive flexibility, cultural and group deprovincialization and environmental concern, with social dominance orientation (SDO), need for closure (NFC) and curiosity as moderators. Study 1 (N = 394) manipulated interaction valence (positive vs. negative) and target (ingroup vs. outgroup) and Study 2 (N = 574) manipulated valence and semantic distance (atypical vs. prototypical outgroup members). We hypothesized stronger cognitive gains from intergroup contact, especially with atypical outgroup members. Overall, results provided little support for the main hypotheses or for TTE, aside from targeted effects. In Study 1, positive vicarious interactions increased creativity. Additionally, low-SDO participants showed reduced abstract reasoning and low-NFC participants showed increased creativity following positive contact. In Study 2, atypical outgroup contact decreased deprovincialization and creativity, yet high-SDO participants reported greater cultural deprovincialization after positive contact with atypical outgroup members. These findings suggest a more nuanced and conditional view on TTE: despite evidence for a broad TTE being limited, under specific conditions, vicarious contact could facilitate cognitive liberalization.
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