A recent study looked at how certain personality characteristics influence the experience of interacting across divides, and how in turn such experiences influence how individuals perceive themselves. The study involved students from an Italian high school, including Italian (majority) students and immigrant (minority) students, who responded to a survey at the beginning and at the end of the school year. The survey questions focused on personality traits, namely if the students were agreeable, extroverted, and open to new experiences, along with how often they interacted with people from different social backgrounds and the quality of those interactions.
The study found that the more the students were agreeable and open to new experiences, the more likely they were to look for opportunities to interact with people from another group and to have a good experience doing so. Also, if the students had high-quality interactions with another group, the students started to think of themselves as more agreeable and open to new experiences.
As societies wrestle with how best to bridge divides between people, it’s important to consider how personality and high-quality interactions factor into the equation. While an ongoing question for research and practice is how to involve individuals who are less agreeable and open to new experiences, the current study can help practitioners be mindful of the impact of cross-group interactions on different individuals. Efforts to bring people into contact with one another across divides might go beyond building bridges and start to reshape the very people involved.
Vezzali, L., Turner, R., Capozza, D., & Trifiletti, E. (2018). Does intergroup contact affect personality? A longitudinal study on the bidirectional relationship between intergroup contact and personality traits. European Journal of Social Psychology, 48, p. 159-173.