Intergroup trust in Northern Ireland.

Although prominent political agendas have placed a great deal of importance on building trust in postconflict areas, there has been a lack of empirical research on its role in areas of intergroup conflict. The authors conducted two studies to examine the relationship between trust and intergroup behavioral tendencies-and the potential for intergroup contact to build trust in Northern Ireland. Study 1 showed that outgroup trust mediates the impact of intergroup contact on behavioral tendencies toward the outgroup.

Individual-level and group-level mediators of contact effects in Northern Ireland: the moderating role of social identification.

We tested a model which considered individual-level (intergroup anxiety) and group-level (perceived realistic and symbolic threats to the in-group) threats as simultaneous mediators in the relationship between the quantity and quality of cross-community contact and intergroup attitudes (Study 1, N=166) and trust (Study 2, N=163) in Northern Ireland. The studies tested the hypothesis that the strength of group-identification moderates the importance of individual- vs. group-level threats as predictors of attitudes and trust and as mediators of contact effects.