In psychology and other social sciences, the contact hypothesis suggests that intergroup contact under appropriate conditions can effectively reduce prejudice between majority and minority group members. Following World War II (1939–1945) and the desegregation of the military and other public institutions, policymakers and social scientists had turned an eye toward the policy implications of interracial contact. Of them, social psychologist Gordon Allport united early research in this vein under intergroup contact theory.
In 1954, Allport published The Nature of Prejudice, in which he outlined the most widely cited form of the hypothesis.Allport, G. W. (1954). "The Nature of Prejudice". Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books The premise of Allport's hypothesis states that under appropriate conditions, interpersonal contact could be one of the most effective ways to reduce prejudice between majority and minority group members. According to Allport, properly managed contact should reduce issues of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination that commonly occur between rival groups and lead to better intergroup interactions.
In the decades following Allport's book, social scientists expanded and applied the contact hypothesis toward the reduction of prejudice beyond racism, including prejudice toward physically and mentally disabled people, women, and LGBTQ+ people, in hundreds of different studies.
In some subfields of criminology, psychology, and sociology, intergroup contact has been described as one of the best ways to improve relations among groups in conflict.Brown, R., & Hewstone, M. (2005). An integrative theory of intergroup contact. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 37, pp. 255–343). San Diego, CA: Elsevier Academic Press.Wright, S. C. (2009). Cross-group contact effects. In S. Otten, T. Kessler & K. Sassenberg (Eds.), Intergroup relations: The role of emotion and motivation (pp. 262–283). New York, NY: Psychology Press. Nonetheless, the effects of intergroup contact vary widely from context to context, and empirical inquiry continues to this day.
History
While Gordon W. Allport is often credited with the development of the contact hypothesis, the idea that interpersonal contact could improve intergroup relations was not a novel one. In the 1930s and 1940s, writers had already begun speculating about the outcomes of interracial contact. In 1947, sociologist R. M. Williams described interpersonal collaboration with goal interdependence as a worthwhile strategy to reduce intergroup hostility.
Following WWII, social scientists examined the effects of desegregation on racial attitudes in the U.S. Merchant Marine, and in desegregated New York City housing projects. In 1951, as national attention turned to issues of desegregation in schools, ultimately leading up to Brown v. Board of Education, Robert Carter and Thurgood Marshall, from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, solicited expert opinions from social science. A range of social scientists, from Kenneth Clark to Floyd and Gordon Allport, weighed in on the psychological effects of desegregation, and conditions under which interracial contact might attenuate racial prejudice, including an amicus curiae brief filed in the Brown v. Board case.
Other studies have claimed that contact hypothesis is very simple and optimistic and that contact would most likely gravitate toward hostility rather than friendship if two competitive parties were involved. If groups with a negative outlook were brought together, it would lead to increases of negative attitudes rather than positive.Amir, Y. (1976). The role of intergroup contact in the change of prejudice and ethnic relations. In P.A. Katz (Ed.), Towards the elimination of racism (pp. 245-308).New York: Pergamon.
Allport situated his formulation of the contact hypothesis in broader discussion of racial diversity—a precursor to interracial proximity and contact. While diversity more generally might foment conflict and prejudice, Allport suggested that contact, under four particular conditions, would facilitate intergroup understanding and consequently reduce prejudice.
Conditions of intergroup contact
In the years prior to Allport's framing of intergroup contact theory, social scientists had already begun discussing the conditions of intergroup contact that would produce intergroup anxiety, prejudice, or other "detrimental psychological effects". Wilner, Walkley, and Cook, two years prior to The Nature of Prejudice, studied segregation and integration in housing projects, and also suggested four conditions under which intergroup attitudes would change for the better. Under the assumption that prejudice arises from racial segregation, they suggested that it would diminish when members occupy "the same or equivalent roles in the situation," share background characteristics (like education, age, gender, or socioeconomic status), perceive common interests or goals, and when the "social climate […] is not unfavorable to interracial association."
Concurrently, Carolyn Sherif and Muzafer Sherif developed their Robbers Cave experiment, an illustration of realistic conflict theory. The Sherifs highlighted the importance of superordinate goals and equal status between groups, but notably, did not weigh in alongside other social scientists in their amicus brief for Brown v. Board of Education.
In Allport's own words,
In other words, four conditions under which intergroup contact will reduce prejudice are:
Equal status. Both groups must engage equally in the relationship. Members of the group should have similar backgrounds, qualities, and characteristics. Differences in academic backgrounds, wealth, skill, or experiences should be minimized if these qualities will influence perceptions of prestige and rank in the group. Common goals. Both groups must work on a problem/task and share this as a common goal, sometimes called a superordinate goal. This goal can only be attained if the members of two or more groups work together by pooling their efforts and resources. Intergroup cooperation. Both groups must work together for their common goals without competition. Groups need to work together in the pursuit of common goals. Support of authorities, law, or customs. Both groups must acknowledge some authority that supports the contact and interactions between the groups. The contact should encourage friendly, helpful, egalitarian attitudes and condemn ingroup-outgroup comparisons.
Additionally, Allport specified that within intergroup cooperation, personal interaction, involving informal, personal interaction between group members would scaffold learning about each other and the formation of cross-group friendships. Yet, without these conditions, casual or superficial contact would cause people to resort to stereotypes.
The largest meta-analysis of the contact literature suggested that the conditions are facilitating but not essential. However, more recent meta-analysis highlights that many configurations of the conditions have not yet been experimentally tested.
Psychological processes involved in intergroup contact
A number of psychological processes have been hypothesised to explain how and why intergroup contact is able to reduce prejudice and improve intergroup relations. First, Allport (1954) argued that intergroup contact facilitates learning about the outgroup, and this new outgroup knowledge leads to prejudice reduction. Second, intergroup contact is believed to reduce the fear and anxiety people have when interacting with the outgroup, which in turn reduces their negative evaluations of the outgroup. Third, intergroup contact is hypothesised to increase people's ability to take the perspective of the outgroup and empathize with their concerns. Empirical research has only found weak support for role of outgroup knowledge in prejudice reduction; however, the affective mechanisms of intergroup anxiety and outgroup empathy have accumulated extensive empirical support.
The reduction of prejudice through intergroup contact can be described as the reconceptualization of group categories. Allport (1954) claimed that prejudice is a direct result of generalizations and oversimplifications made about an entire group of people based on incomplete or mistaken information. The basic rationale is that prejudice may be reduced as one learns more about a category of people. Rothbart and John (1985) describe belief change through contact as "an example of the general cognitive process by which attributes of category members modify category attributes" (p. 82). An individual's beliefs can be modified by that person coming into contact with a culturally distinct category member and subsequently modifying or elaborating the beliefs about the category as a whole.
However, contact fails to cure conflict when contact situations create anxiety for those who take part. Contact situations need to be long enough to allow this anxiety to decrease and for the members of the conflicting groups to feel comfortable with one another. Additionally, if the members of the two groups use this contact situation to trade insults, argue with each other, resort to physical violence, and discriminate against each other, then contact should not be expected to reduce conflict between groups. To obtain beneficial effects, the situation must include positive contact.
Effects of intergroup contact
Social scientists have documented positive effects of intergroup contact across field, experimental, and correlational studies, across a variety of contact situations, and between various social groups. Pettigrew and Tropp's canonical 2006 meta-analysis of 515 separate studies found general support for the contact hypothesis. Furthermore, their analysis found that face-to-face contact between group members significantly reduced prejudice; the more contact groups had, the less prejudice group members reported. Moreover, the beneficial effects of intergroup contact were significantly greater when the contact situation was structured to include Allport's facilitating conditions for optimal contact. Recent evidence also suggests that intergroup contact can buffer the development and transmission of prejudicial attitudes by attenuating the influence of broader societal attitudes as well as parental and peer socialization.
Examples
Prejudice toward African Americans
The majority of intergroup contact research has focused on reducing prejudice toward African Americans. For example, in one study, Brown, Brown, Jackson, Sellers, and Manuel (2003) investigated the amount of contact white athletes had with black teammates and whether the athletes played an individual or team sport. Team sports (e.g., football or basketball), as opposed to individual sports (e.g., track or swimming), require teamwork and cooperative interactions to win. Results showed that white athletes who played team sports reported less prejudice than athletes who played individual sports.
Prejudice toward gay people