Stefania Paolini and Patrick Kotzur are thrilled to share a new Nature Reviews Psychology article together with a team of world-class international intergroup contact scholars.
The Nature Reviews Psychology article proposes a novel habit-rupture model to make sense of emerging — and at times puzzling — findings about everyday intergroup contact.
Their temporally integrated model maps how habitual and disrupted contact experiences unfold over time — across both stable and changing, regulated and unregulated, social settings.
Read the abstract or full article
Advanced longitudinal studies of intergroup contact rarely show meaningful within-person change in intergroup attitudes. To explain this pattern, the authors introduce the novel habit–rupture model of intergroup contact. The model proposes that, much like many everyday behaviors, engagement with—or avoidance of—intergroup contact operates largely on “autopilot” through stable, self-reinforcing intergroup contact habits. These habits sustain enduring “contact bubbles” of consistently high or low contact, which in turn anchor highly stable intergroup attitudes. Attitude change is therefore unlikely unless these routines are disrupted by major life events or sociopolitical shocks – contact ruptures – that force individuals out of their habitual contact patterns.
Many people live inside “contact bubbles”:
Drawing on this recently advanced habit–rupture model, Stefania Paolini and Patrick Kotzur plan to showcase compelling evidence for this novel temporally integrated account as co-conveners of two symposia to be presented at the General Meeting of the European Society of Social Psychology to take place in Strasbourg (France) next Summer.
Evidence packaged in ten conference papers will show how habitual and disrupted contact experiences unfold over time across stable and changing everyday settings and can be harnessed towards social cohesion.
Paolini, S., Dixon, J., Kotzur, P. F., Friehs, M. T., Bracegirdle, C., Lauterbach, A., ... & Harwood, J. (2026). Towards a habit-rupture model of intergroup contact in everyday settings. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1-16. (read-only) here: https://rdcu.be/e0eCb
Friehs, M.-T., Schäfer, S. J., Wüst, K., Dürr, C., Böttcher, T., Resch, G., Sander, B., Woltz, A., van Zalk, M. H. W., Bagci, S. C., Barlow, F. K., Bracegirdle, C., Cernat, V., Hässler, T., Jugert, P., Kotzur, P. F., Bohmert, M. N., Swart, H., van Laar, C., … Christ, O. (2025). What is the longitudinal evidence for causal intergroup contact effects?—A comparative multi-method re-analysis of 21 published studies. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/vnhs7_v1
Meleady, R., Shulman, D., Kotzur, P. F., Hodson, G., & Crisp, R. J. (2025). Contact ruptures: How ecological shifts reshape intergroup contact and outgroup attitudes. American Psychologist. Advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037.amp0001624 O'Donnell, A., Friehs, M.-T., Kotzur, P. F., Nitschinsk, L., Lizzio-Wilson, M., Sibley, C. G., & Barlow, F. K. (2025). Stable profiles of contact and prejudice: Few people report co-occurring increases in intergroup contact and decreases in prejudice over time. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000500
Paolini, S., Graf, S., & Kotzur, P. F. (2025). Intergroup contact research at the intersection of individual experience and desired social realities. In Handbook of Ethics and Social Psychology (pp. 324-334). Edward Elgar Publishing. Chapter 24: Intergroup contact research at the intersection of individual experience and desired social realities in: Handbook of Ethics and Social Psychology
Watt, S., Paolini, S., & McMcMahone (2026). The first four years: Evolution of community attitudes towards refugees in a new rural refugee resettlement location in Australia. Journal of Refugees Studies. [forthcoming]
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