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This research was partly supported by a senior postdoctoral research grant from the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO) awarded to Jasper VanAssche (FWO.3E0.2021.0085.01) under the supervision of Arne Roets. Data collection for the South African studies was supported by the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, for which the authors thank Steve Vertovec. This research was also funded by grants from the NORFACE ERA NET Plus Migration in Europe program, TheLeverhulme Trust, and the Central Community Relations Unit. Intergroup contact provides a reliable means of reducing prejudice. Yet, critics suggested that its efficacy is undermined, even eliminated, under certain conditions. Specifically, contact may be ineffective in the face of threat, especially to (historically) advantaged groups, and discrimination, experienced especially by (historically) disadvantaged groups. We considered perceived intergroup threat and perceived discrimination as potential moderators of the effect of contact on prejudice. Two meta-analyses of correlational data from 34 studies (totaling 63,945 respondents-drawn from 67 subsamples across 19 countries) showed that contact was associated with decreased prejudice and increased out-group positivity, in cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, among advantaged and disadvantaged group members, and in both Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) and non-WEIRD contexts. Both perceived threat and perceived discrimination moderated the contact-attitude association, but in an unanticipated direction. Indeed, contact's beneficial effects were at least as strong among individuals high (r = .19) as among individuals low (r = .18) in perceived threat. Similarly, the effects of contact were at least as strong among those high (r = .23) as among those low (r = .20) in perceived discrimination. We conclude that contact is effective for promoting tolerant societies because it is effective even among subpopulations where achieving that goal might be most challenging. Postprint

We will conduct a series of studies to validate a new scale that measures the extent to which respondents engage with situations that are morally or ethically ambiguous. This will involve assessing their perception and comfort with such ambiguity, their willingness and perceived ability to deal with it, and their perceived value of such ambiguity. Our first study will be focused on the psychometric properties of the items and scales. Our intention is to reduce our initial set of 42 items by roughly half. We will identify items to retain for the final scales using traditional criteria; e.g., by their factor loadings on the expected factors, their distributional properties, their importance and centrality to the concepts we want to measure, and their performance as parts of scales. Study 1 will focus on these exploratory analyses (i.e., exploratory factor analysis, descriptive statistics, alpha and item-total correlations). Study 2 will also use this strategy if no clear set of items is identified in Study 1 and/or if items need to be substantially re-written or replaced with new items. If a clear set of items is identified in Study 1, we will analyze the data using a confirmatory factor analysis that tests the expected factor structure, and continue to refine items and scales if that analysis yields unsatisfactory fit indices. We will continue new studies (rounds of data collection) until we find a stable set of items and scales (as established by acceptable fit indices in confirmatory factor analysis).