Interpreting references to group membership in context: feelings about intergroup contact depending on who says what to whom

Contact research often manipulates the salience of group membership, with little consideration of how such manipulations affect feelings toward intergroup contact, and how contextual features may moderate its effects. We propose that feelings toward intergroup contact may not depend solely on the degree to which group membership appears to be salient, but on how references to group membership are interpreted in the intergroup context. Two experimental studies examined how references to group membership may be interpreted differently depending on their source (ingroup or outgroup) and the recipient (minority or majority), and how these interpretations predict feelings toward cross‐group interactions. In Study 1, references to group membership were interpreted more negatively from an outgroup source among majority participants, yet a reverse pattern was observed for minority participants. Similar effects were obtained in Study 2, yet participants tended to respond negatively when an outgroup member referred specifically to their group. Moreover, feelings about cross‐group interactions were predicted only (Study 1) and strongly (Study 2) by the degree to which outgroup members' references were interpreted negatively, beyond what was predicted by participants' general awareness of group membership. Implications of these findings for future research on contact and salience are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.