science

When Contact Changes Minds

When Contact Changes Minds is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand When Contact Changes Minds rather than just read about it. In short: "When Contact Changes Minds: An Experiment on Transmission of Support for Gay Equality" is a fraudulent article by then-UCLA political science graduate student Michael LaCour and Columbia University political science professor Donald Green. The article was published in the academic journal Science in December 2014, and retracted in May 2015 after it emerged that the data in the study had been forged by LaCour.

Key takeaways

When Contact Changes Minds belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect When Contact Changes Minds to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of When Contact Changes Minds from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

"When Contact Changes Minds: An Experiment on Transmission of Support for Gay Equality" is a fraudulent article by then-UCLA political science graduate student Michael LaCour and Columbia University political science professor Donald Green. The article was published in the academic journal Science in December 2014, and retracted in May 2015 after it emerged that the data in the study had been forged by LaCour. The article purported to demonstrate that people's minds on the issue of gay marriage could be changed by conversations with gay canvassers, but not with straight canvassers.

Study The authors claimed to have investigated whether gay or straight messengers were effective at encouraging voters to support same-sex marriage and whether attitude change persisted and spread to others in voters’ social networks. The purported results, measured by an unrelated panel survey, show that both gay and straight canvassers produced large effects initially, but only gay canvassers’ effects persisted in 3-week, 6-week, and 9-month follow-ups. LaCour and Green (2014) also found strong evidence of within-household transmission of opinion change, but only in the wake of conversations with gay canvassers. The article is ranked in the top 5% of all research output, as scored using Altmetrics. The purported findings made international headlines and received wide media attention including in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Los Angeles Times, and on This American Life. The study attracted widespread attention, in part because it seemed to challenge the conventional understanding of social persuasion that people tend not to change their point of view even when presented with contrasting information. The Yes Campaign in Ireland stated that LaCour and Green (2014) "provided a template" for campaigners to use one-to-one contact and first person accounts to reach out to more conservative voters, leading to the historic Irish referendum legalizing gay marriage on May 22, 2015.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with When Contact Changes Minds

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what When Contact Changes Minds claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to When Contact Changes Minds before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about When Contact Changes Minds ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of When Contact Changes Minds

In research: When Contact Changes Minds appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses When Contact Changes Minds in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: When Contact Changes Minds is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2014 documents, 2015 controversies in the United States, 2015 scandals, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for When Contact Changes Minds outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “When Contact Changes Minds” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study When Contact Changes Minds in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what When Contact Changes Minds means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain When Contact Changes Minds out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is When Contact Changes Minds in simple terms?

Why does When Contact Changes Minds matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study When Contact Changes Minds?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on When Contact Changes Minds.