Contact with gays and lesbians and same-sex marriage support: The moderating role of social context

• Personal contact with gays and lesbians strongly predicts same-sex marriage support.
• Contact effects are weaker for individuals with more ties to religious conservatives.
• Moderating effect of ties to religious conservatives holds net of personal religiosity.

Empirical research on the contact hypothesis has paid inadequate attention to the broader social and normative context in which contact occurs. Using data from the nationally representative Portraits of American Life Study, I test whether individuals’ core networks moderate the effect of personal contact with gays and lesbians on same-sex marriage attitudes. OLS regression results demonstrate that, though contact is strongly associated with greater support for same-sex marriage, the effect is attenuated for individuals with a higher proportion of religious conservatives in their core network. This moderating effect holds even after controlling for respondents’ religiosity and when the sample is limited to self-identified religious liberals and moderates. Future research on intergroup contact should be attentive to other influences within individuals’ social contexts and examine how the outcomes of contact across a variety of social boundaries are moderated by these social influences.