When the Majority Becomes the Minority: A Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Immersive Experience With Racial Out-Group Members on Implicit and Explicit Racial Biases

Abstract

The present study investigated the effects of immersive exposure to other-race individuals on racial bias. In Study 1, we tracked African students (N = 85) who went to study at a Chinese university and thus experienced daily contact with Chinese individuals en masse for the first time. Using a cohort-sequential longitudinal design, we found that an implicit pro-Chinese racial bias emerged within 3 months after these students arrived in China, and that this bias remained stable for at least a year. In contrast, their explicit racial bias did not change. In Study 2, we assessed another group of African students (N = 47) at 1 month and at 3 months after their arrival in China, looking at not only their implicit and explicit racial bias, but also their intergroup contact quantity, intergroup contact quality, and intergroup friendship. We found that intergroup contact quantity and intergroup friendship predicted implicit but not explicit racial bias 2 months later. The findings suggest that immersive experiences with racial out-groups can have early and lasting effects on implicit racial bias.