Do they dislike us as much as we think? Positive contact as a potential rectifier of meta-attitude inaccuracy in conflictual intergroup settings.

This article investigates intergroup meta-attitude inaccuracy—the discrepancy between how groups perceive outgroup evaluations of their own group and the outgroup's actual attitudes—and its relationship with intergroup contact in conflictual settings. Across four correlational studies involving Black–White British (UK), Turks–Kurds (Turkey), and Catholics–Protestants (Northern Ireland), all groups tended to overestimate negative evaluations from outgroups. Positive intergroup contact consistently predicted greater meta-attitude accuracy through increased shared reality, which was linked to more positive outgroup attitudes, while the effects of negative contact and affective mediators (such as anxiety, fear, and anger) varied by group and context. The findings highlight positive intergroup contact as a potential mechanism to reduce biased negative perceptions in polarized intergroup relations, with shared reality emerging as a key cognitive mediator.