Stay humble and enjoy diversity: The interplay between intergroup contact and cultural humility on prejudice

Despite the effectiveness of intergroup contact in reducing prejudice, opportunities for contact are not always associated with positive mutual intergroup perceptions. This might be due, at least partly, to negative contact, i.e., intergroup encounters perceived as unpleasant, and to individual characteristics which might shape reactions to opportunities for contact and to actual contact. Here we considered cultural humility, i.e., a subdomain of humility referring to the ability to have a humble and other-oriented approach to others’ cultures. We propose that cultural humility might orient individuals to successfully and non-judgmentally interact with outgroup members. Therefore, cultural humility might be associated with positive contact and with reduced negative contact, and might favor beneficial effects of opportunities for contact in terms of prejudice reduction. In a cross-sectional study conducted among Italian participants considering immigrants and Muslims as outgroups, we found that cultural humility was associated with positive contact and with reduced negative contact. Furthermore, opportunities for contact were associated with negative contact only among respondents with low cultural humility. Cultural humility also moderated the valenced contact-prejudice associations. However, disconfirming our predictions, positive contact was associated with reduced prejudice mainly for people with low cultural humility, while negative contact was associated with more prejudice mainly for people with high cultural humility. Findings will be discussed emphasizing the role of cultural humility for intergroup contact and the possible contribution of cultural humility training to foster harmonious intergroup relations.