  We investigated how participation in machine-arranged meetings were
associated with feelings of institutional belonging and perceptions of
demographic groups. We collected data from 535 individuals who participated in
a program to meet new friends. Data consisted of surveys measuring demography,
belonging, and perceptions of various demographic groups at the start and end
of the program. Participants were partitioned into a control group who received
zero introductions, and an intervention group who received multiple
introductions. For each participant, we computed twelve features describing
participation status, demography and the amount of program-facilitated exposure
to others who were similar to them and different from them. We used a linear
model to study the association of our features with the participants' final
belonging and perceptions while controlling for their initial belonging and
perceptions. We found that those who participated in the machine-arranged
meetings had 4.5% higher belonging, and 3.9% more positive perception of
others.
