Testing the Contact Hypothesis: The Association Between Personal Friendships and Anti-Jewish Attitudes Among 13- to 15-Year-Old Students in England and Wales

Abstract

Drawing on data provided by 5811 students from schools in England, Wales and London who self-identified as either ‘no religion’ or as Christian, this study explored the effect of the contact hypothesis (having friends who are Jewish) on scores recorded on the five-item Scale of Anti-Jewish Attitude (SAJA), after controlling for type of school (with or without a religious character), location (England, Wales, and London), personal factors (sex and age), psychological factors (extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism) and religious factors (self-assigned affiliation as Christian, worship attendance, and belief in God). The data demonstrated the positive effect of having friends who are Jews on lowering anti-Jewish attitudes. The path is then described from educational research to curriculum development in the design of resources that offer young learners vicarious experience of having friends who are Jews.