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Study 1

The main aim was to test whether positive meta-stereotypes have positive effects on cross-group interactions. I also tested initial prejudice as a potential moderator. [...] After completing a measure of prejudice, participants were led to believe that they would meet an outgroup individual who had positive or negative expectations of them. I also included two control conditions in which participants expected similar positive and negative evaluations by an ingroup member. [...]

Method

Participants and experimental design Participants were 74 Italian male high-school students. Mean age was 17.03 years. They were randomly allocated to one of the four conditions of a 2 (Meta-stereotype valence: positive vs. negative) × 2 (Target-group: ingroup vs. outgroup) factorial design.

Procedure and measures Participants, examined during classes, were first asked to complete a questionnaire as part of a research on social attitudes. Embedded among filler items, they completed a measure of prejudice toward African immigrants, assessed by means of a 10-item (e.g., desirable/undesirable) semantic differential. [...] They were informed that, in a few minutes, they were about to individually meet an unknown same-sex person who was not a student of their school [...]. They then completed a brief personal information sheet, on which they had to indicate gender, name, nationality, country of birth, nationality of their father and mother. Participants also indicated their expectations on the person they were going to meet. Specifically, they had to indicate on a 5-step scale (1 = not at all;5= very much) the extent to which the future interaction partner possessed eight traits (see below). [...] After a few minutes, the experimenters came back to participants’ room and delivered to participants their partners’ answers on an information sheet identical to the one they had just completed (the information sheet with partners’ answers was prepared by experimenters). All partners’ information sheets indicated that partners were males, so that all participants were aware that the interaction would be with a same-sex person. [...] In the Positive meta-stereotype valence condition, I selected eight traits that were unique to the positive meta-stereotype (i.e., traits or their opposite that were not shared with the other-stereotype): nice, generous, curious, warm, rich, optimist, artistic, calm. [...] After spending 2 minutes to examine their partner’s responses, participants completed a brief final questionnaire before the meeting. Embedded among filler items, they completed a measure of anticipated enjoyment of the upcoming interaction. I used five bipolar items (e.g., hostile/friendly, unpleasant/pleasant) on which participants indicated how they thought the upcoming interaction with their partner would be. [...]

Study 2

Method

Participants and experimental design Participants were 47 Italian male high-school students. Mean age was 16.06 years. They were randomly allocated to one of three conditions: Positive meta-stereotypes, Negative meta-stereotypes, No meta-stereotypes.

Procedure and measures The procedure was similar to that of Study 1. In this case, however, I dropped the ingroup condition (all ostensible partners were presented as belonging to the outgroup). In addition to the Positive meta-stereotype and to the Negative meta-stereotype conditions, I also included a No meta-stereotypes condition, in which neither positive nor negative meta-stereotypes were activated. In this condition, the personal information sheet that participants exchanged with their ostensible partners contained only demographic information, in order to let them know that they were about to meet a same-sex outgroup member (i.e., the information sheet contained the following information: gender, name, nationality, country of birth, nationality of father and mother; see Study 1). Finally, participants were administered a questionnaire with the dependent variables. First, they completed a measure of concerns about being accepted by the interaction partner. [...] Participants also completed a three-item measure of feelings about contact with the interaction partner [...]. Finally, participants completed a measure of anticipated enjoyment of the upcoming interaction identical to that used in Study 1 [...]. All items were rated on a 7-step scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much), except for the measure of anticipated enjoyment, where 1 was given to the negative and 7 to the positive pole (4 = neither/nor). [...].