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This study focuses on the latent aspects of an ethno-religious conflict. It describes why and how people avoid contact with out-groups. Their contact avoidance is largely based on the notion of power. It shows how contact avoidance towards out-groups is related to people´s ethno-religious identification. The relationship between contact avoidance and ethno-religious identification is explained by factors, such as perceived group threat, out-group distrust, fundamentalism, quantity of contact and direct experiences of violence. Finally, it illustrates how education, mass media and history of conflict are related with intergroup contact avoidance.

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