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Method

Participants A total of 104 undergraduate students (41 males and 63 females) from different academic disciplines and backgrounds at a large university in central Spain participated [...]. The selection was made using a pre-test questionnaire that was filled out at least 15 days before the meeting session. Only Spanish-born students were invited to participate in order to examine the effect of contact in members of the dominant ingroup.

Procedure [...]. All participants were told that they were taking part in an online task session with students from different university faculties and other academic institutes within the same city. A new version of the PISCO software [...] was used for this purpose. The program notifies users that they conform a group made up of six virtual participants (five Spanish students including the experimental participant, and one from Latin America). [...]. The online task was split into three consecutive stages. In the introductory stage each participant was asked to introduce him/herself to the other team members: [...]. The second stage aimed to induce local-group identification by asking team members to solve a puzzle-task in order to compare time scores with scores in other nearby cities. [...]. In the final discussion-stage, the PISCO program simulated a random pairing from the six members: without exception, each experimental participant was paired with the Latino member in order to discuss some controversial topics in Spanish society [...]. [...]. Once the thematic discussion was concluded participants filled in a post-test questionnaire. [...].

Manipulations [...]. For this study, national flags were introduced to instill a lasting ethnic identity in the depersonalized condition [...]. [...] The participants in this condition are expected to share both a lasting (ethnic) membership and a transient (local) membership simultaneously. [...], a control group will be made personally identifiable through the exposure of photos of the participants’ faces. [...]. Users in this condition are not expected to hold any group membership. For the behavior manipulation, two profiles for the same fictional character were created: an Ecuadorian immigrant with long-term residence in Spain and Spanish nationality. The Latin American confederates who collaborated in this study were prompted to display either a confirming or disconfirming behavior based on two positive attributes (sociable, cheerful), and two negative attributes (male chauvinist, religious conservative). [...].

Measures In order to evaluate changes in stereotyped attributions, a stereotypicality measure was calculated from scores of the percent estimate task [...]. The participants were asked to consider typical attributes of Latin Americans (sociable, cheerful, male chauvinist, religious conservative) and to estimate the percentage of group members who possessed each of these attributes (0–100). In addition, two counter-stereotypic attributes [...] were included: two positively valenced (cultured, open minded) and two negatively valenced (hermetic, apathetic). The stereotypicality rating (a = .71) was calculated by subtracting the counter-stereotypic scores (averaged across all four stereotypic traits) out of the stereotypic attributes. [...] In both measures, the subjects indicated their opinion on a six-point Likert-like scale (1 = completely disagree, 6 = completely agree). The perceived typicality of the confederate was measured with a single item [...]: ‘‘How typical of his ethnic group do you consider your discussion partner?’’ (1 = Not at all typical, 6 = Very typical). In addition, the 8-item scale, identification with the national ethnic group [...], was introduced as a measure of lasting group identification. [...].