Social Psychology research at SPRQL spans many subfields to answer the question: how do social interactions with friends and strangers affect our attitudes and behaviour towards people who are different than us?
Scroll through below to learn about a few of the broad areas of SPRQL research focus and read some representative publications.
Intergroup Contact
Intergroup contact is an important subfield in social psychology. Originally written by Allport (1954), this theory posits that under the right conditions, contact (social interactions) between different groups can improve intergroup relations. For example, group members might hold warmer attitudes, experience less anxiety, and express less prejudice (for meta-analyses, see Pettigrew & Tropp (2006; 2008); for reviews, see Al Ramiah & Hewstone (2003); Dovidio et al., (2003); Paolini et al., (2021)).
Dr. Page-Gould is a leading scholar in intergroup contact. Some of her work (Page-Gould et al., 2008) looked at cross-group friendships as a form of intergroup contact. SPRQLers have since meta-analyzed the literature on extended contact and modelled the relationship between singular intergroup interactions and repeated intergroup contact.
Read some SPRQL work on intergroup contact:
- Zhou, S., Page-Gould, E., Aron, A., Moyer, A., & Hewstone, M. (2019). The Extended Contact Hypothesis: A meta-analysis on 20 years of research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 23, 132-160. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868318762647
- MacInnis, C. C. & Page-Gould, E. (2015). How can intergroup interaction be bad if intergroup contact is good? Exploring and reconciling an apparent paradox in the science of intergroup relations. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(3), 307-327. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691614568482
- Page-Gould, E., Mendoza-Denton, R., & Tropp, L. R. (2008). With a little help from my cross-group friend: Reducing anxiety in intergroup contexts through cross-group friendship. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 1080-1094. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.95.95.1080
Cross-Group Friendships
Cross-group relationships refer to relationships between members of different groups. Most of this research is on interracial friendships and romantic relationships, which are found to improve intergroup outcomes for both children and adults. For a review and annotated bibliography on this topic, see Dr. Page-Gould’s website. Please DO NOT cite or quote without permission.
Read some SPRQL work on cross-group relationships:
- Page-Gould, E., Mendoza-Denton, R., & Mendes, W. B. (2014). Stress and coping in interracial contexts: The influence of race-based rejection expectations and cross-group friendship in daily experiences of health. Journal of Social Issues, 70, 256-278. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12059
- Page-Gould, E., Mendoza-Denton, R., Alegre, J. M., & Siy, J. O. (2010). Understanding the impact of cross-group friendship on interactions with novel outgroup members. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 775 – 793.
ExperienceSampler
Most research studies in social psychology are cross-sectional, i.e. they look at differences between people. You might think about splitting participants into two groups and studying them under different conditions. Another method is to look at differences within people. For example, do the same people behave differently in different situations? The experience sampling method (ESM) allows researchers to answer these sorts of questions. Participants typically journal or answer surveys multiple times through the data collection period.
Dr. Page-Gould and Dr. Sabrina Thai (2018) developed ExperienceSampler, a free and open source smartphone app scaffold, to aid researchers in collecting ESM data. Participants can download ExperienceSampler apps onto their smartphones and receive notifications to complete ESM surveys, programmed by the researcher.
Learn more about ExperienceSampler at its website and read Dr. Thai and Dr. Page-Gould’s introductory paper here.
Studies using ExperienceSampler:
- Midgley, C., Thai, S., Lockwood, P., Kovacheff, C., & Page-Gould, E. (2020). When every day is a high school reunion: Social media comparisons and self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000336
- Ford, B. Q., Feinberg, M., Thai, S., Gatchpazian, A., & Lassetter, B. (under review). The political is personal: The costs of daily politics. Preprint
- Thai, S. & Page-Gould, E. (2018). ExperienceSampler: An open-source scaffold for building experience sampling smartphone apps. Psychological Methods, 23(4), 729-739. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/met0000151