Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Department of Applied Economics, Free University Brussels, Brussels, Belgium.
PLoS One. 2021 Feb 5;16(2):e0245983. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0245983. eCollection 2021.
Intergroup relations theory posits that cross-group friendship reduces threat perceptions and negative emotions about outgroups. This has been argued to mitigate the negative effects of ethnic diversity on generalized trust. Yet, direct tests of this friendship-trust relation, especially including perceptions of threat and negative affect as mediators, have remained rare at the individual level. In this article, we bridge this research gap using representative data from eight European countries (Group-Focused Enmity). We employ structural equation modelling (SEM) to model mediated paths of cross-group friendship on generalized trust via perceptions of threat and negative affect. We find that both the total effect as well as the (mediated) total indirect effect of cross-group friendship on generalized trust are weak when compared with similar paths estimated for prejudice.
群体间关系理论认为，跨群体友谊可以减少对群体外群体的威胁感知和负面情绪。有人认为，这可以减轻族裔多样性对普遍信任的负面影响。然而，在个体层面上，直接检验这种友谊-信任关系的研究，特别是包括威胁和负面情绪的感知作为中介变量的研究仍然很少。在本文中，我们使用来自八个欧洲国家的代表性数据（以群体为中心的敌意）来填补这一研究空白。我们采用结构方程模型（SEM）来通过对威胁和负面情绪的感知，来建立跨群体友谊对普遍信任的中介路径模型。我们发现，与类似的偏见路径估计相比，跨群体友谊对普遍信任的总效应以及（中介的）总间接效应都较弱。
