Learning About Outgroups: The Impact of Broad Versus Deep Interactions

We hypothesize that broad contact, involving brief interactions with multiple outgroup members, and deep contact, meaning longer interactions with a single outgroup member, play distinct roles in shaping intergroup relations. We set up a factory in India and recruited Hindu and Muslim men to work in pairs on joint production tasks. We randomly assigned participants to work either with the same ingroup or outgroup partner daily (deep contact), a different outgroup partner each day (broad contact), or to a control group. Deep contact strengthens social and economic ties with the outgroup partner. But only broad contact reduces the majority group's misperceptions about outgroup strangers. Using within-treatment variation in partners’ pre-treatment productivity, we show that participants in both arms learn about their partners, but broad participants also generalize these belief updates to strangers. These findings align with a model in which independent sampling promotes learning about outgroups more than prolonged interaction with a single individual does. Nevertheless, neither type of contact changes behavior toward the wider outgroup.