The face of Christchurch is changing. While the whole country is becoming more diverse, the inflow of people to help rebuild the city has accelerated that trend here.

Look around and what you will see are increasing numbers of arrivals from the Philippines, the United Kingdom, Ireland, India, and China. Not only are they here to lend a hand with the rebuild but many are making Christchurch their permanent home. As a result, we will all have a more multicultural and multilingual city to look forward to.

At the same time, it's important to note that change is never that straightforward. Across the city there are both long term residents and new arrivals wondering what they have got themselves into. Some research that our company recently completed for the Chamber of Commerce suggests that for both groups it's like being at a secondary school disco: the girls are lined up one side of the hall opposite the boys, with both waiting for the other to make the first move.

Except for many new arrivals the distance between them and the residents is much greater. The social science research is clear, what matters are perceptions of difference. This is why those new arrivals from Ireland and the United Kingdom often have an easier time here than those from China or Somalia. Our impressions of others are formed very quickly (essentially instantaneously) and are profoundly resistant to change. But a key part of those impressions is based on how much someone looks like us.

There is no doubt that xenophobia is deep-seated. Some researchers (and particularly neuroscientists) believe this has a biological basis. Others argue that it is a cultural construct. But what everyone seems to agree on is that historically we have needed a "them" in order to define the "us". In the language of social science, the fear of the "outgroup" is what solidifies belonging to an "in-group".

You can see this in-group/outgroup phenomenon at work by completing the Implicit Association Test (which you can find on the Harvard.edu website). The test is designed to explore beliefs and attitudes that are not accessible to conscious awareness. It is perfect for exploring attitudes about difference because we are often oblivious to our own biases. In other words, we are all more fearful of difference than we either like to admit or even know.

This is why "xenophobia" is such an insightful description, because it highlights our fear of things that are "strange".

Breaking the dancehall deadlock means overcoming this fear. One way to do this is to show that the people on the other side of the hall aren't so strange after all. Communication can do this, but experience is a much more powerful learning tool.

The assumption that underpins so many public education campaigns is that, with the right messages, people can think their way into a new way of acting. But it's often much easier to have them act their way into a new way of thinking. As the social psychologist David Myers put it "it's true that we sometimes stand up for what we believe, but it's also true that we come to believe in what we stand up for".

The research I mentioned earlier that we did for the Chamber of Commerce is part of a campaign they are running that will do precisely this. That campaign, which launches this week, is called "Start with a Smile". It is built around ways to spark connections between new arrivals and other residents.

As well as the usual collection of posters and billboards this campaign makes use of a thing called the "smile couch". This is couch (shaped like a smile — seriously) where members from both groups can share the seat and start a conversation (there are conversation starter cards to make this even easier).

By focusing on both behaviour and attitudes, Start with a Smile effectively reaches a hand across the dancehall and invites members of both groups to start dancing. It's an invitation the rest of us should welcome, because it really is time to dance.

Carl Davidson is the Head of Insight at Research First Ltd