Does Terror Defeat Contact? Intergroup Contact and Prejudice Toward
Muslims Before and After the London Bombings
Dominic Abrams, Julie Van de Vyver,
and Diane M. Houston
University of Kent
Milica Vasiljevic
University of Kent and University of Cambridge
Allport (1954) proposed a series of preconditions that have subsequently been shown to facilitate effects
of intergroup contact on attitudes toward outgroups (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). The present study
examines whether objective threat, in the form of the 2005 London 7/7 terror attack, can inhibit the
positive effects of contact. We tested hypotheses that contact would affect prejudice toward Muslims
regardless of the bombings (contact prevails) or that the bombings would inhibit the effects of contact on
prejudice (threat inhibits). Data were collected through representative national surveys 1 month before
and again 1 month after the attacks in London on July 7, 2005 (pre-7/7 N  931; post-7/7 N  1,100),
which represent relatively low and relatively high salience of “objective threat.” Prejudice against
Muslims significantly increased following the bombings. Psychological threats to safety (safety threat)
and to customs (symbolic threat) mediated the impact of the bombings on prejudice, whereas perceived
economic threat did not. All 3 types of psychological threat mediated between contact and prejudice.
Multigroup structural equation modeling showed that, even though the objective threat did raise levels
of psychological threats, the positive effects of contact on prejudice through perceived psychological
threats persisted. Results therefore support a contact prevails hypothesis.
Keywords: intergroup contact, intergroup conflict, threat, prejudice
The present research examines evidence from a unique data set
involving nationally representative samples of the United King-
dom (U.K.) population. It examines how contact and psychological
threats relate to prejudice toward Muslims in Britain before and
after the 7/7 London bombings. Muslims are currently a prominent
target of overtly hostile prejudice in Western societies (Brown et
al., 2012). Evidence from different Pew Global surveys illustrates
this point well. In the year following 9/11, 39% of the U.S.
population reported unfavorable attitudes toward Muslims (Pew
Research Center, 2004). In 2005, across European countries, there
were also high levels of prejudice. For example, 51% of Dutch
respondents and 34% of French respondents reported holding
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This article was published Online First February 16, 2017.
DOMINIC ABRAMS holds a PhD. He is a professor of social psychology and
the director of the Centre for the Study of Group Processes (CSGP) at the
School of Psychology, University of Kent. He is Vice President (Social
Sciences) of the British Academy, and co-editor of the journal Group Pro-
cesses and Intergroup Relations. His research interests include prejudice and
prosociality, social identity, intergroup and intragroup processes, social devel-
opment, stereotype threat, and societal attitudes to aging and social change.
JULIE VAN DE VYVER holds a PhD. At the time of writing she was an
ESRC-CASE doctoral student working collaboratively with the charity
People United. She is now a faculty member at the Department of
Psychology at the University of Lincoln. Her research interests are the
role of emotions in prosociality, the development of group dynamics,
and the application of methods to reduce prejudice.
DIANE M. HOUSTON holds a PhD. She is a professor of social
psychology and Pro Vice Master for Education at Birkbeck, University
of London. Her research interests include processes of discrimination,
gender role attitudes, women’s work participation, and educational
achievement.
MILICA VASILJEVIC holds a PhD. She is a research associate at the
Behaviour and Health Research Unit, University of Cambridge. Her
research interests include interethnic conflict and forgiveness, inter-
group attitudes, and the relationship between social structure and social
cohesion. Her current research focuses on the design and implementa-
tion of social-cognitive interventions to change people’s attitudes and
behaviors.
THIS RESEARCH WAS FUNDED by the U.K. government’s Women and
Equality Unit, and analyses were further funded by Economic and Social
Research Council Grant ES/J500148/1.
This article has been published under the terms of the Creative Com-
mons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any me-
dium, provided the original author and source are credited. Copyright for
this article is retained by the author(s). Author(s) grant(s) the American
Psychological Association the exclusive right to publish the article and
identify itself as the original publisher.
CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING THIS ARTICLE should be addressed to
Dominic Abrams, Centre for the Study of Group Processes (CSGP), School
of Psychology, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NZ, United
Kingdom. E-mail: d.abrams@kent.ac.uk
Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology © 2017 The Author(s)
2017, Vol. 23, No. 3, 260–268 1078-1919/17/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pac0000167
260
unfavorable attitudes toward Muslims (Pew Research Center,
2005). In Pew’s telephone interviews in the United Kingdom, 14%
of respondents reported feeling unfavorable (Valasco Gonzalez,
Verkuyten, Weesie, & Poppe, 2008), and by 2008 the proportion
had increased to 27% (though these figures include Muslim re-
spondents; Pew Research Center, 2008). However, this evidence
does not shed light on whether or how the 7/7 bombings affected
prejudice toward Muslims. In the present research we consider
how this unexpected threat and positive intergroup contact jointly
affected prejudice toward Muslims by the non-Muslim majority.
Using evidence from our pre- and post-7/7 surveys, we first con-
sider how the objective threat arising from the London 7/7 terrorist
attack by Islamic extremists affected non-Muslims’ perceptions of
threat from, and their prejudice (social distance) toward, the wider
group that was identified as the source of the attack, namely Muslims.
Second, we consider whether the relationships between objective
threat and prejudice, and between contact and prejudice, are mediated
by different specific types of psychological threat. Finally, we con-
sider whether the objective threat moderated the relationships between
contact, psychological threat, and prejudice.
Intergroup Contact
Intergroup contact theory proposes that contact between mem-
bers of different groups can reduce intergroup prejudice and dis-
crimination (Brown & Hewstone, 2005; Pettigrew, 1998). Ample
experimental, cross-sectional, and longitudinal research has con-
firmed this hypothesis (see Al Ramiah & Hewstone, 2013), and a
meta-analysis of over 500 studies showed a significant negative
relationship between direct contact and prejudice (r  .22, p 
.0001; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006).
Allport’s original intergroup contact hypothesis proposed that
contact between groups could be successful only if a number of
conditions are met: equal status, common goals, intergroup coop-
eration, and support by societal institutions (Allport, 1954). Re-
cently, however, researchers suggested that these conditions
should be considered complementary, or facilitating, rather than
essential (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008). Indeed, Pettigrew and
Tropp’s (2006) meta-analyses of the effects of intergroup contact
demonstrated that even when these conditions were not fully met,
contact effects remained positive, though weaker.
The Role of Threat
The current research extends the understanding of the effects of
contact by exploring the efficacy of contact from a different starting
point from that in the extant literature. Past research has shown that
contact can be effective even when Allport’s conditions are not
present. However, few studies have tested whether contact can be
effective when the intergroup context changes suddenly for the worse
(see Paolini et al., 2014; Wagner & Hewstone, 2012). One reason for
this gap in laboratory and field experiments may be ethical limits on
deliberately inducing negative contexts for contact. Another reason is
that, understandably, researchers have focused on the positive poten-
tial of contact despite unfavorable conditions rather than on the
negative impact of newly unfavorable conditions even when contact
does arise. Yet, outside the laboratory, intergroup contexts frequently
do change for the worse in unanticipated ways. It is therefore valuable
to turn to historical evidence to understand what role intergroup
contact plays following such events.
Some recent research has considered the role of factors that may
prevent intergroup contact from diminishing prejudice (e.g., Bar-
low et al., 2012; Paolini et al., 2014; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006).
Indeed, it is known that negative contact may be associated more
strongly with elevated prejudice than positive contact is with
attenuated prejudice (Barlow et al., 2012). On the other hand,
Paolini et al. (2014) found that prior positive contact appeared to
buffer against the effects of new experiences of negative contact
(self-reported, imagined, or media-based) on group membership
salience, suggesting that effects of contact might differ depending
on where it occurs in the sequence of conflict-related events (cf.
Wagner & Hewstone, 2012).
The current research adopts a comparable approach in seeking
to understand the joint influences of positive and negative factors
on prejudice. However, rather than examining how a new negative
experience of contact affects prejudice, we examine the potentially
divergent effects of elevated objective threat (negative) and con-
tact (positive) on prejudice.
There is evidence that contact can promote positive intergroup
relations even in the context of intergroup conflict, such as in
Northern Ireland, Israel, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Sri Lanka (see
Cehajic, Brown, & Castano, 2008; Hewstone, Cairns, Voci, Ham-
berger, & Niens, 2006; Hewstone, Tausch, Hughes, & Cairns,
2008; Malhotra & Liyanage, 2005; Maoz & Ellis, 2008). However,
conflict generally involves ongoing or repeated instances of neg-
ative contact and continuous direct threat. This means that it is
likely to be difficult to disentangle the two adverse factors (neg-
ative contact and threat). An aim of the present research, therefore,
was to consider threat and contact as potentially distinct influences
and to test whether one or the other may prevail as a predictor of
prejudice following a terrorist attack.
Prior research has shown that acts of terror by Islamic funda-
mentalists may worsen people’s attitudes toward Muslims (Coryn,
Beale, & Myers, 2004; Echebarria-Echabe & Fernández-Guede,
2006). However, no research has examined whether such attitudi-
nal changes may override the benefits of intergroup contact. The
current research examines whether intergroup contact can continue
to promote positive intergroup relations, even following a sudden
assault on the intergroup relationship. A terror attack represents
direct and salient evidence of an objective threat, which we regard
as an example of a potential inhibiting (rather than facilitating)
condition of contact. A highly salient terror threat could undermine
positive effects of contact by highlighting dissimilarity and con-
flict rather than cooperation between Muslims and non-Muslims. It
could therefore neutralize effects of contact by inhibiting general-
ization from positive personal experiences of positive contact with
outgroup members to positive attitudes toward the group as a
whole. This idea is in line with past research that has shown that
negative contact induces greater attention to group memberships
than does positive contact (see Paolini, Harwood, & Rubin, 2010)
and that individuals are more likely to generalize from personal
contact experiences to whole group experiences when group mem-
berships are salient (Brown & Hewstone, 2005). If this idea is
correct, then, like negative contact, conditions that highlight threat
in the intergroup relationship may inhibit positive contact effects.
Unlike negative contact, however, objective threat may involve no
direct or even indirect connection between ingroup and outgroup
members.
261TERRORISM, INTERGROUP CONTACT, AND PREJUDICE
Specifying Dimensions of Threat
Generally, greater perceptions of psychological threat should be
related to greater intergroup prejudice (e.g., Doosje, Zimmermann,
Küpper, Zick, & Meertens, 2009; Oswald, 2005), yet many dif-
ferent kinds of psychological threats may be considered. Integrated
threat theory (Stephan & Stephan, 2000) distinguishes between
realistic threats to the ingroup (including threats to the safety, and
economic and political power, of the ingroup) and symbolic threats
(pertaining to the ingroup’s value system and way of life). Stephan
and colleagues (2002) found that perceptions of intergroup conflict
predicted symbolic threat more strongly than realistic threat. Fur-
thermore, realistic and symbolic threats predicted contact differ-
ently among White versus Black participants.
The impact of different types of threat on attitudes seems also to
vary by intergroup context. For example, in Northern Ireland
contact predicted Catholic/Protestant intergroup attitudes via sym-
bolic threat but not via realistic threat (Tausch, Tam, Hewstone,
Kenworthy, & Cairns, 2007). In contrast, research in Israel showed
that realistic but not symbolic threats explained outgroup attitudes
toward immigrants (Bizman & Yinon, 2001). In that context an
immigrant political party had recently gained seats in the Israeli
Parliament, thus highlighting realistic threats to Israeli partici-
pants.
With these points in mind, we surmised that there should be a
degree of specificity in the types of psychological threat that would
be important in the intergroup context of pre- and post-7/7. First,
we distinguish between two different aspects of realistic threat—
economic threat and safety threat (cf. Myers, Abrams, Rosenthal,
& Christian, 2013). A terror attack should increase perceptions of
threat to safety because of the increased salience of physical harm,
but it seems less likely to affect perceptions of economic threat,
because there is little direct economic interdependence between
the perpetrators and potential victims. A terror attack also poses a
symbolic threat to the extent that it is an expression of cultural
rejection by the outgroup and is intended to disrupt cultural activ-
ities. Consistent with this, following terror attacks it is typical that
representatives of the affected group or country make pronounce-
ments that reinforce national values or standards (as followed the
Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris). Thus, a terror attack should in-
crease levels of safety threat and symbolic threat but not economic
threat. Moreover, on the basis of integrated threat theory, these
increases in threat should mediate increases in prejudice.
Contact, Threat, and Prejudice
Previous research has shown that positive intergroup contact is
associated with lower psychological threat. Psychological threat is
often tested as a mediator between contact and outgroup attitudes
(Myers et al., 2013; Pettigrew, Wagner, & Christ, 2010; Tausch et
al., 2007; Velasco González, Verkuyten, Weesie, & Poppe, 2008;
Wagner, Christ, & Pettigrew, 2008; Wagner, Christ, Pettigrew,
Stellmacher, & Wolf, 2006). Therefore, we hypothesized that all
three types of psychological threat could mediate between contact
and prejudice. Higher levels of contact should be associated with
lower levels of psychological threat, which should reduce preju-
dice.
We tested these two sets of mediation hypotheses using struc-
tural equation modeling (SEM). We then proceeded to test the
possibility of moderated mediation. Specifically, by comparing the
mediation models in the pre-7/7 versus post-7/7 samples we tested
whether a change in objective threat levels would also result in a
change in the relationships between contact, psychological threats,
and prejudice. Two different hypotheses were tested, which we
describe as the contact prevails and the threat inhibits hypotheses.
Given that positive effects of intergroup contact on outgroup atti-
tudes persist even in contexts of conflict (Hewstone et al., 2006, 2008;
Maoz & Ellis, 2008), it is possible that positive effects of intergroup
contact on prejudice could occur even in the aftermath of terror
attacks. In other words, the contact prevails hypothesis is that, regard-
less of the introduction of a negative condition such as an objective
threat, intergroup contact should attenuate the level of prejudice. This
hypothesis could be supported in two forms. First, the direct relation-
ship between contact and prejudice should remain equally strong in
both the pre-7/7 and post-7/7 samples. Second, the indirect (mediated)
path from contact via psychological threat to prejudice should remain
equally strong in both samples.
By contrast, the inhibiting conditions idea suggests that objective
threat can inhibit the positive effects of intergroup contact. Thus,
according to the threat inhibits hypothesis, the potential for intergroup
contact to reduce prejudice should be reduced or eliminated by the
presence of a salient objective threat. This would mean that either the
direct or the indirect effects of contact on prejudice would be signif-
icantly smaller in the post-7/7 sample than the pre-7/7 sample.
Method
Design
Two cross-sectional nationally representative surveys were con-
ducted approximately one month before and one month after the July
7 attacks in London.1 The pre-7/7 survey (N  931) was conducted
between May 20 and June 1, 2005, and the post-7/7 survey (N 
1,100) was conducted at the end of July 2005. The surveys were
commissioned by the U.K. Equalities Review and steered by the U.K.
government’s Women and Equality Unit (Abrams & Houston, 2006).
Participants
Muslim participants were excluded from all analyses (4.6% across
samples). Age ranged from 16 to 98 years (M 45.76, SD 19.18).
The majority of participants (90.6%) were White, 4.3% were Black,
2.4% were Asian, and the remainder were mixed heritage or other.
London residents made up 13.6% of respondents. Female participants
constituted 54.4% of the total. Social class was measured using the
social grading system; 2.8% were classified as A (high managerial,
1 Data from the pre-7/7 survey were from a larger survey that assessed a range
of societal perceptions and attitudes to a range of different groups (see Abrams &
Houston, 2006, for details and descriptive statistics). The pre-7/7 comprised 435
men (46.7%) and 496 women (53.3%). Age ranged from 16 to 92 years (M 
44.85, SD  19.05). The majority of participants (82.5%) were White, 6% were
Black, 8.3% were Asian, and the remainder were mixed heritage or other. The
majority of participants (93.3%) were non-Muslim. London residents made up
15.3% of respondents.
The post-7/7 survey was commissioned by the Women and Equality Unit
immediately following the 7/7 bombings. It comprised 497 men (45.2%) and 603
women (54.8%). Age ranged from 16 to 98 years (M 46.54, SD 19.27). The
majority of participants (90.9%) were White, 3.1% were Black, 3.5% were Asian,
and the remainder were mixed heritage or other. The majority of participants
(97.1%) were non-Muslim. London residents made up 13.6% of respondents.
262 ABRAMS, VAN DE VYVER, HOUSTON, AND VASILJEVIC
administrative, or professional), 13.9% as B (intermediate managerial,
administrative, or professional), 23.5% as C1 (supervisory; clerical;
and junior managerial, administrative, or professional), 19.4% as C2
(skilled manual workers), 16.9% as D (semi- and unskilled manual
workers), and 23.4% as E (state pensioners, casual or lowest grade
workers, unemployed with state benefits only).
Procedure
The pre-7/7 and post-7/7 surveys used identical sampling and
interview methodology and were administered by TNS/Omnimas to
nationally representative samples of individuals 16-plus years old
from England, Scotland, and Wales as part of its omnibus face-to-face
CAPI (computer-assisted personal interviews) survey series (see
Abrams & Houston, 2006, for details). To avoid response sets and
biases, we counterbalanced left and right scale anchor points between
participants and rotated item orders within sections of the survey.
Measures
Intergroup contact. Contact with Muslims was measured hier-
archically by asking participants whether they had never had any
contact with a person who is a Muslim (0), or whether they had rarely
or never met (1), had met (2), knew (3), were friends with (4), or were
close friends with (5) a Muslim.
Psychological threat. Three types of psychological threat
were measured: economic, safety, and symbolic threat. Economic
threat was measured by asking participants,
People who live in this country generally work and pay taxes at some
points in their lives. They also use health and welfare services. On
balance, do you think that Muslims in Britain take out more from the
economy than they put in, or not?
This was rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (take out a lot
more than they put in) to 5 (put a lot more in than they take out).
Safety threat was measured by asking participants “How do you think
Muslims in this country affect things like the safety, security, or health
of other people in Britain?” It was rated on a 5-point scale ranging
from 1 (much worse) to 5 (much better). Symbolic threat was mea-
sured by asking participants “How do you think Muslims affect the
customs, traditions, or general way of life of other people in Britain?”
This was also rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (much worse)
to 5 (much better). For clarity of presentation, psychological threat
items were reverse-coded for analyses so that low values represented
low threat and high values represented high threat.
Prejudice. Prejudice was operationalized through measures of
social distance from or toward Muslims (see Bogardus, 1967). Par-
ticipants were asked “How comfortable or uncomfortable do you
think you would feel if a suitably qualified Muslim person was
appointed as your boss?” “How comfortable or uncomfortable do you
think you would feel if a Muslim person married one of your close
relatives (such as a brother, sister, child or re-married parent)?” and
“How comfortable or uncomfortable do you think you would feel if a
Muslim person moved in next door to you?” Participants responded
on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (very uncomfortable) to 5 (very
comfortable). A mean score was calculated and employed in the
analyses (Cronbach’s alpha  .88). For clarity, social distance items
were reverse-coded for analysis so that low values represented low
prejudice and high values represented high prejudice.
Results
Preliminary Analyses
Correlation analyses revealed some significant differences be-
tween participants’ intergroup contact, psychological threats, and
prejudice depending on their social class, gender, and age and
whether they were White and lived in London, (see Table 1). To
adjust for these relationships in subsequent analyses, we included
these variables as covariates.
Analyses of variance tested whether the covariates and levels of
contact changed from low objective threat (pre-7/7) to high objec-
tive threat (post-7/7). Results showed that contact and all covari-
ates remained the same across both samples (ps .100), except for
ethnicity. Specifically, there were more White participants post-
7/7 (M  0.93, SE  0.01) than pre-7/7 (M  0.87, SE  0.01),
F(1, 1935)  22.82, p  .001, 2  .01.
Analyses of Covariance
Analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) were conducted to test
whether objective threat (pre-7/7 vs. post-7/7) affected psycholog-
ical threat and/or prejudice. Results showed that objective threat
significantly increased safety threat, F(1, 1930) 60.72, p .001,
2  .03; symbolic threat, F(1, 1930)  24.13, p  .001, 2 
.01; and prejudice, F(1, 1930)  17.53, p  .001, 2  .01.
Objective threat did not affect economic threat, F(1, 1930) 2.56,
p  .110, 2  .001 (see Figure 1 for means and standard errors
showing the effects of objective threat (pre 7/7 vs. post 7/7) on
psychological threat (economic and safety) and social distance).2
These findings are consistent with the idea of threat specificity.
Because we used a SEM approach for the remaining analyses, it
was also useful to consider the relationships between objective
threat and measured variables in terms of correlation. Correlations
between contact, the different types of threat, and prejudice within
each level of objective threat are depicted in Table 1. Point-biserial
partial correlations (echoing the ANCOVA results in the previous
paragraph) indicate significant positive relationships between ob-
jective threat and safety threat (r  .18, p  .001), symbolic threat
(r  .11, p  .001), and prejudice (r  .10, p  .001) but not with
contact (r  .02, ns) or economic threat (r  .04, ns).
Mediation Analyses
Mediation analyses were conducted to test whether objective
threat (pre-7/7 vs. post-7/7) and contact each predicted prejudice
and whether they did so through psychological threats (economic,
safety, and symbolic).
To test our mediation hypotheses, we conducted SEM in AMOS
(Arbuckle, 2014) using observed variables (see Figure 2, showing
standardized path coefficients between variables). The model fit
the data well, 2(13 df, N  1937)  36.35, p  .001; root-mean-
2 The effects of objective threat (pre-7/7 vs. post-7/7) on psychological
threats and prejudice did not vary depending on whether the covariates
were included or excluded from the analyses of variance. Specifically,
objective threat significantly affected symbolic threat, safety threat, and
prejudice (ps  .001) but did not significantly affect economic threat (p 
.052).
263TERRORISM, INTERGROUP CONTACT, AND PREJUDICE
square error of approximation .03; comparative fit index 0.99.
The indirect effects of objective threat (  .04, SE  .01, p 
.002, 95% confidence interval [CI: .05, .11]) and of contact
(  .06, SE  .01, p  .002, 95% CI [.04, 0.02]) on
prejudice were both significant.
Specifically, results showed that objective threat predicted sym-
bolic threat (  .11, SE  .04, p  .001) and safety threat ( 
.17, SE  .04, p  .001) but not economic threat (  .03, SE 
.05, p  .139). Furthermore, contact predicted symbolic threat
(  .14, SE  .01, p  .001), safety threat (  .09, SE 
.01, p  .001), and economic threat (  .12, SE  .01, p 
.001). Finally, symbolic threat (  .23, SE  .03, p  .001),
economic threat (  .19, SE  .02, p  .001), and safety threat
(  .05, SE  .03, p  .05) each predicted prejudice.
Moderated Mediation Analysis
To examine whether contact and objective threat (pre-7/7 vs. post-
7/7) interacted to predict psychological threats and in turn prejudice,
we conducted a multigroup structural equation model. Specifically,
the multigroup SEM allowed us to examine whether contact predicted
psychological threats and in turn prejudice differently at low (pre-7/7)
versus high (post-7/7) levels of objective threat.
Results showed that the mediation model fit the data equally
well at low and at high objective threat (the model was not
improved by unconstraining any paths from being equal). No paths
significantly varied between pre-7/7 and post-7/7. In other words,
objective threat and contact did not interact to predict psycholog-
ical threats or prejudice. We noted that although safety threat did
not predict prejudice in the pre-7/7 sample (low objective threat:
  .02, SE  .05, p  .602), it did significantly predict prejudice
in the post-7/7 sample (high objective threat:   .07, SE  .04,
p  .050). Nevertheless, these two paths did not differ signifi-
cantly (Z  0.93, ns).
Discussion
Substantial research on intergroup contact has shown that con-
tact can reduce prejudice (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). However,
much of the original theory behind this research was conceived in
an era when the most pressing concerns of researchers were
tackling majority (White) attitudes toward a particular racial mi-
Table 1
Bivariate Correlation Coefficients Depicting the Relationships Among Variables Before and After the 7/7 Terror Attacks
Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1. Contact — .15 .10 .16 .33 .22 .12 .24 .06† .12
2. Economic threat .14 — .51 .46 .37 .13 .06† .03 .03 .10
3. Safety threat .12 .50 — .66 .30 .13 .08 .07 .08 .04
4. Symbolic threat .15 .49 .66 — .37 .11 .12 .08 .02 .05
5. Social distance .29 .35 .33 .40 — .07† .11 .08 .05 .09
6. White race .17 .07 .13 .08 .02 — .26 .23 .04 .01
7. London resident .12 .08 .11 .06† .07 .18 — .10 .02 .01
8. Age .23 .04 .04 .05 .05 .14 .06† — .02 .01
9. Sex .10 .01 .02 .01 .02 .08 .04 .03 — .09
10. Social class .13 .09 .03 .10 .15 .01 .02 .02 .05 —
Note. Muslim respondents are excluded from the analyses. Pre-7/7 correlations (N 869) are provided above the diagonal, and post-7/7 correlations (N
1,068) are provided below the diagonal. 7/7  July 7, 2005, referring to the terrorist bombings in London.
† p  .10.  p  .05.  p  .01.  p  .001.
Figure 1. Means and standards errors for the effects of objective threat (pre-7/7 vs. post-7/7) on psychological
threat (economic and safety) and social distance.
264 ABRAMS, VAN DE VYVER, HOUSTON, AND VASILJEVIC
nority (Blacks), subsequently applying it to other majority/minor-
ity contexts. As both psychological research and intergroup rela-
tions have become more globalized, there have been new questions
about the way that intergroup contact can bear on intergroup
relations. One of the new pressing issues is the global capacity to
prevent the escalation of intergroup conflicts in the face of chal-
lenges such as countering Islamic extremism without generating
Islamophobia. A particular feature of this landscape is the presence
of terrorist attacks, something that intergroup contact theory did
not include in its original scope. Such attacks raise new theoretical
and methodological problems.
Intergroup Contact
Allport’s (1954) original statement of contact theory and the
focus of subsequent reviews (Brown & Hewstone, 2005; Petti-
grew, 1998) have tended to characterize the four conditions set out
in the theory as ones that may involve gradual change. The focus
is often on planning long-term strategies and carefully planned
intervention through new laws, policies, or practices. Furthermore,
the theory was largely concerned with factors that facilitate the
capacity of contact to reduce prejudice rather than with factors that
could actively disrupt that capacity. Sudden unplanned and poten-
tially transformative counterevents were not an explicit part of the
original theory.
Although dramatic acts of terrorism or intergroup aggression are
not a modern phenomenon, the availability of rapid and extensive
sharing of experiences and views through modern communications
and hence the potential for fast and widespread opinion formation
has arguably transformed the way people experience and make
sense of such acts. Therefore, it is important to reconsider, adapt,
and develop a new theory to accommodate and reflect effects of
both facilitative and disruptive influences. In that vein, the present
article provides an effort to consider whether terrorist acts can
create an inhibiting condition that might militate against the ben-
efits of contact, at least for some people.
Intergroup contact research has established that contact between
members of different groups can reduce outgroup prejudice and
discrimination even when Allport’s (1954) conditions are not met
(Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006) and even under conditions of intergroup
conflict (Hewstone et al., 2008; Maoz & Ellis, 2008). However,
research has not addressed directly whether contact continues to have
similarly positive effects even after acts of terror. Given that such acts
are known to have detrimental effects on people’s attitudes toward
Muslims (Coryn et al., 2004; Echebarria-Echabe & Fernández-Guede,
2006), it is at least plausible that this may be because positive effects
of contact are neutralized.
Threat Specificity
Prior research has shown that the impact of different types of
threat on intergroup attitudes may vary depending on the inter-
group context (Myers et al., 2013). In principle, both symbolic and
realistic threats can play a role (Bizman & Yinon, 2001; Tausch et
al., 2007). We proposed that realistic threat and symbolic threat
should both be affected by a terror attack, but we differentiated
realistic threat into two types—safety threat and economic threat.
On the basis of the contention that threats affect specifically
relevant rather than general aspects of intergroup relations, we
reasoned that there should be a weaker effect on economic threat
than on symbolic or safety threats. This hypothesis was supported.
We also tested two potential mediating roles of psychological
threats. First, we tested the possible mediation of the objective threat
(terror attack) on prejudice. This showed that safety threat and sym-
bolic threat together mediated between objective threat and prejudice.
Because economic threat was not affected by objective threat, it could
not play a mediating role. Note, however, that all three types of
psychological threat were significantly related to prejudice, consistent
with the premise that these threats would also have causes and
potential impacts arising from sources that were independent of the
terror attack. Indeed, when we tested the possible mediation of the
effects of contact, we found that all three types of psychological threat
Figure 2. Standardized path coefficients for mediation analyses using structural equation modeling. All
exogenous variables (social class, ethnicity, London residency, age, gender, and objective threat) were allowed
to covary. Residuals of endogenous variables were fixed in the model (depicted using empty circles and arrows).
† p  .10.  p  .05.  p  .01.  p  .001.
265TERRORISM, INTERGROUP CONTACT, AND PREJUDICE
mediated between contact and prejudice. Thus, the findings show
clear support for two important hypotheses. First, that the effects of
the terror attack on prejudice operate via quite specific types of
psychological threat, and second that, regardless of objective threats,
psychological threats from multiple sources do mediate between con-
tact and prejudice, which is in line with prior evidence (e.g., Dhont &
Van Hiel, 2011).
Contact Prevails, or Threat Inhibits?
We tested two different hypotheses, which we characterized as the
contact prevails and the threat inhibits hypotheses. Although these
were posed as alternatives, we retained an open mind about whether
the evidence would support either more than the other. The contact
prevails hypothesis was that, regardless of other conditions, inter-
group contact should attenuate the level of prejudice. The threat
inhibits hypothesis was that the potential for intergroup contact to
reduce prejudice should be reduced or eliminated by the presence of
a salient (objective) threat. The results provide real-world support for
the contact prevails hypothesis. Specifically, effects of contact on
prejudice were equivalent across low and high levels of objective
threat. In other words, contact reduced prejudice through psycholog-
ical threats, regardless of the bombings. Moreover, although the effect
of safety threat on prejudice became stronger following the bombings,
the effect of contact on prejudice was not reduced.
Limitations and Implications
The present research has several limitations but also significant
strengths. First, the data are cross-sectional rather than longitudi-
nal. Methodologically, sudden events pose a significant challenge.
Aside from fortuitously timed longitudinal surveys that happen to
include all relevant measures of contact and prejudice, the impact
of these events can only rarely be captured. Researchers are
generally limited to the serendipitous availability of data collected
prior to such events and reactive studies conducted soon afterward.
Although longitudinal evidence would be ideal, the availability of
completely comparable cross-sectional evidence a few weeks ei-
ther side of such an event is a rarity, and it is even more so with
a representative sample of the general population. We are highly
confident that, compared with cross-sectional studies that use
opportunity samples or student samples that may not match across
time, the two samples in the present research are similarly repre-
sentative and that the survey methodology is identical so that it is
meaningful to compare them directly.
The present research is also unique because the preevent mea-
sures were explicitly designed to measure contact with and prej-
udice toward Muslims, and the U.K. government was in a position
to sponsor the post-7/7 survey. It was not possible to report this
evidence publicly at the time, but 10 years on, we were able to use
it to examine important hypotheses from contact theory, integrated
threat theory and new hypotheses regarding the interaction be-
tween contact and objective threat. Given the growing levels of
prejudice against Muslims in Western societies (Brown et al.,
2012; Lean, 2012; Velasco González et al., 2008), such evidence
offers not only theoretical insight but also has practical implica-
tions.
A second limitation is that we did not have extensive measures
of the variables of interest. Although multi-item measures are
certainly desirable and are often viable in experimental research,
survey research is constrained more by cost and by the willingness
of respondents to answer lengthy sets of questions. The measures
used in the present research were drawn from prior studies, and we
have no reason to question their validity. To some extent, limita-
tions in reliability (i.e., error variance) are compensated by the
large sample size, so it is unlikely that important relationships or
effects would be missed.
Caveats are clearly necessary about any causal interpretation in
the absence of longitudinal data, but we believe there is a good
case for treating prejudice as an outcome relative to other vari-
ables. There is a logical and temporal basis for assuming that
objective threat was a true exogenous variable. There is a strong
theoretical and empirical argument (from previous meta-analytic
evidence) for accepting that contact is likely to have a stronger
causal impact on prejudice than vice versa (Binder et al., 2009;
Levin, van Laar, & Sidanius, 2003; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). In
the present research, there is also a methodological case backing
that assumption because the measures directly tapped prior contact
and anticipated social distance.
A further limitation is that the data are no longer contemporary.
However, we believe that the benefit of hindsight has allowed us
to use the data in a more-informed way. First, since the data were
collected, not only have there been advances in intergroup contact
research and theory but arguably terrorist events have increased in
number, the “war on terror” has been perpetuated and widened,
and there is increased salience of international Islamic terrorism
(ranging from the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris to attacks in
Belgium and in Australia, Afghanistan, and Nigeria and the impact
of the Islamic State in the Middle East). Therefore, it is increas-
ingly important to understand how and why prejudice may be
affected by such events. It is rare that data such as those in the
present research have been collected prior to and directly follow-
ing such an attack, so the present evidence offered rare empirical
insight as well as opportunities to test and develop theory.
A potentially important practical implication of the evidence is
that strategies to minimize the potentially prejudice-raising effects
of terror attacks may need to address directly the relevant psycho-
logical threats (e.g., allay safety fears and symbolic fears) and not
just confront or condemn the prejudice without attending to those
threats. A second implication is that intergroup contact may be
sufficient to deal with some forms of threat (e.g., economic threat),
but it may not prevent continued impact of other forms of threat.
Understanding when and how contact offers the most potent ave-
nue for intervention and understanding how other factors may
inhibit its effects are key to addressing the potential for increased
intergroup conflict following terror attacks (Abrams & Eller, in
press; Van de Vyver, Houston, Abrams, & Vasiljevic, 2015).
In conclusion, the unique evidence in the present research un-
derlines that intergroup contact can play an important role in
reducing prejudice even following an objective threat posed by a
terrorist attack. We hope that this evidence provides new insights
for those who are interested in the implications of terrorism for
peace and conflict, raises interesting questions for research on
intergroup contact, and is of value to policymakers and practitio-
ners who have to anticipate or deal with the aftermath of terror
attacks.
266 ABRAMS, VAN DE VYVER, HOUSTON, AND VASILJEVIC
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