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Contact Hypothesis
Definition
The contact hypothesis lies at the center of social psychological research on prejudice reduction. The effort to understand if contact between groups would facilitate intergroup relations was triggered after World War II by the human relations movement. In its simplest form, the contact hypothesis proposes that contact between individuals of different groups will improve relations between them. Over the years since the introduction of the contact hypothesis by Gordon Allport, a long list of optimal conditions to yield improved relations has been forwarded. However, most of the empirical findings from studies focusing on the contact hypothesis suggest that the optimal conditions can be narrowed down to four essential factors.
Essential Conditions of the Contact Hypothesis
One essential factor in order for contact to facilitate harmonious intergroup relations ...
- Action Control
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- Psychological Entitlement
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- Roles and Role Theory
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- Self-Affirmation Theory
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- Self-Awareness
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- Self-Expansion Theory
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- Self-Regulation
- Self-Reports
- Self-Serving Bias
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- Social Comparison
- Social Identity Theory
- Spotlight Effect
- Stigma
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- Uniqueness
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- Action Identification Theory
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- Adaptive Unconscious
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- Recency Effect
- Responsibility Attribution
- Risk Appraisal
- Salience
- Satisficing
- Schemas
- Scripts
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
- Self-Reference Effect
- Self-Serving Bias
- Self-Verification Theory
- Shifting Standards
- Similarity-Attraction Effect
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- Social Impact Theory
- Social Projection
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- Spreading of Alternatives
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- Subtyping
- Symbolic Interactionism
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- Transactive Memory
- Value Pluralism Model
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