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Both majority and minority group members fear race-based rejection, and respond by disparaging the groups that they expect will reject them. It is not clear, however, how this process differs in minority and majority groups. Using large representative samples of White ( N= 4,618) and Māori ( N= 1,163) New Zealanders, we found that perceptions of race-based rejection predicted outgroup negativity in both groups, but in different ways and for different reasons. For White (but not Māori) New Zealanders, increased intergroup anxiety partially mediated the relationship between cognitions of rejection and outgroup negativity. Māori who expected to be rejected on the basis of their race reported increased ethnic identification and, in part through this, increased support for political action benefiting their own group. This finding supports collective-action models of social change in historically disadvantaged minority groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the extent to which minority group members are surrounded by outgroup members in their immediate environment as a predictor of social dominance orientation. Using a large representative sample of New Zealanders, we found that minority group members in outgroup dense environments reported lower levels of social dominance orientation (Study 1). In studies 2 and 3, Asian Australian and Black American participants who were surrounded by outgroup members reported lower social dominance orientation. For majority group (White) participants there was no association between social dominance orientation and outgroup density. Study 4 explained the overall pattern: Black Americans surrounded by outgroup members perceived their group to be of lower status in their immediate environment, and through this, reported lower social dominance orientation. This article adds to growing literature on contextual factors that predict social dominance orientation, especially among minority group members.

We aim to provide one explanation for why the link between contact and prejudice is consistently less strong for minority group members than it is for majority group members. Specifically, we propose a "wallpaper effect" such that contact works to increase minority group members' positivity towards majority groups when they live in areas densely populated with other minority group members. Conversely, we suggest that when minority group members live in neighborhoods patterned with majority group faces (as is so often the case), contact will be less transformative. We test this assumption using a large sample of both New Zealander minority (Māori; N = 925) and majority (European; N = 3805) group members. In line with predictions, Māori who lived in minority dense neighborhoods showed the traditional association between contact and increased warmth towards New Zealander Europeans. This relationship, however, was weak or non-existent when they lived in primarily European neighborhoods. Contact effects in majority group members were unaffected by neighborhood composition. The interaction held when controlling for, and was not explained by: gender, income, experiences of harm, cognitions of race-based rejection, or realistic threat. We provide the first evidence to suggest that when it comes to minority group members' intergroup attitudes, contact with majority group members may be a relatively ineffective predictor unless the "wallpaper" of their lives is minority-dense.