Brandon M. Craig

PhD Candidate

Adolescent friendship, cross-sexuality ties, and attitudes toward sexual minorities: A social network approach to intergroup contact


Journal article


Cassie McMillan, Brandon Craig, Chaïm la Roi, René Veenstra
Social Science Research, vol. 114, 2023 Aug, p. 102916


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Cite

APA   Click to copy
McMillan, C., Craig, B., la Roi, C., & Veenstra, R. (2023). Adolescent friendship, cross-sexuality ties, and attitudes toward sexual minorities: A social network approach to intergroup contact. Social Science Research, 114, 102916. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2023.102916


Chicago/Turabian   Click to copy
McMillan, Cassie, Brandon Craig, Chaïm la Roi, and René Veenstra. “Adolescent Friendship, Cross-Sexuality Ties, and Attitudes toward Sexual Minorities: A Social Network Approach to Intergroup Contact.” Social Science Research 114 (August 2023): 102916.


MLA   Click to copy
McMillan, Cassie, et al. “Adolescent Friendship, Cross-Sexuality Ties, and Attitudes toward Sexual Minorities: A Social Network Approach to Intergroup Contact.” Social Science Research, vol. 114, Aug. 2023, p. 102916, doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2023.102916.


BibTeX   Click to copy

@article{mcmillan2023a,
  title = {Adolescent friendship, cross-sexuality ties, and attitudes toward sexual minorities: A social network approach to intergroup contact},
  year = {2023},
  month = aug,
  journal = {Social Science Research},
  pages = {102916},
  volume = {114},
  doi = {10.1016/j.ssresearch.2023.102916},
  author = {McMillan, Cassie and Craig, Brandon and la Roi, Chaïm and Veenstra, René},
  month_numeric = {8}
}

Social ties between members of in- and outgroups are theorized to reduce individual levels of prejudice. However, instances of intergroup contact are not isolated events; cross-group interactions are embedded in broader networks defined by various social processes that guide the formation and maintenance of interpersonal relationships. This project reconsiders the potential benefits of intergroup contact by applying a network perspective to examine whether friendships between youth of different sexualities can shape individuals’ homophobic attitudes. The impact of cross-sexuality ties is evaluated through the application of stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOMs) to a two-wave sample of Dutch adolescents. Results indicate that the benefits of cross-sexuality connections become negligible when we account for how patterns of network connectivity and segregation are informed by other individual-level traits, such as age, religious background, ethnicity, and gender. In other words, heterosexual adolescents who are situated in network positions that provide opportunities to form cross-sexuality friendships would be expected to report less homophobic attitudes even in the absence of this intergroup contact. These findings suggest that the cross-sexuality contact observed in the social world often represents instances of “preaching to the choir,” limiting the potential for intergroup connections to challenge systems of social inequality.

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