The contact-prejudice relationship among ethnic minorities: examining personal discrimination as a boundary condition

This paper contributes to the literature on how perceived discrimination influences the impact of intergroup contact among ethnic minority members. Previous research has shown that perceived group discrimination inhibits the positive outcomes of intergroup contact among ethnic minority members. In extension, this paper examines whether perceived personal discrimination has a similar negative impact as a boundary condition of the contact-prejudice relationship among ethnic minority members. Analyses expand previous intergroup contact research by showing that the impact of intergroup contact is uniform across various levels of perceived personal discrimination. This finding suggests that the otherwise harmful consequences of perceived personal discrimination can be effectively counterbalanced by positive contact experiences among ethnic minority members. Analyses use evidence from a national probability sample, which was fielded in 2006 to examine some of the largest ethnic minority groups (N=3,462). The concluding section discusses the theoretical implications of the empirical findings.