An Empirical Investigation of Secondary Transfer Effects of Contact Among Five Ethnic-Cultural Minority Groups in the Netherlands

Although the relationship between intergroup contact and prejudice has received pervasive scholarly attention, research on secondary transfer effects (STEs) – whereby positive contact experiences with primary outgroups promote tolerance towards uninvolved secondary outgroups – is still in the early stages. In particular, only a few studies have explored inter-minority STEs (i.e., primary-to-secondary-minority-outgroup transfer effects). Therefore, concerns about the robustness, the generality, and the underlying psychological mechanisms remain unaddressed. To tackle these gaps in literature, we investigated STEs in a Dutch representative sample of five ethnic-cultural minority groups (N=5,157) and an additional national majority group sample (N=1,046). Our meta-analytic integrations revealed a small but robust overall inter-minority STE. It was further shown that attitude generalization (i.e., enhanced attitudes towards the primary outgroup) was an explanatory process variable. Follow-up analyses additionally demonstrated significant intergroup STE variation. Taken together, our findings contribute to literature by showing the robustness of inter-minority STEs in the Dutch context.