Intergroup Contact and Social Justice

Background

The intergroup contact hypothesis, originally articulated by Gordon Allport in 1954 in The Nature of Prejudice, states that contact between groups can improve intergroup relationships and reduce prejudice. Rather than just simple contact, however, Allport drew from earlier work of sociologist Robin M. Williams, Jr., to specify that the positive effects are predicated on a set of conditions: support from authorities, equal status in contact situation, acquaintance potential, and commonality of goals and interdependence. The original hypothesis has spurred more than a half century of research and practice on intergroup contact. Applications of intergroup contact span across the world, across the life cycle, and across a wide range of groups.

Is intergroup contact effective? Thomas Pettigrew and Linda Tropp conducted what is now the definitive study of the effectiveness of intergroup contact, a meta-analysis of 515 studies with 713 independent samples from 1940 through 2000. In total, the samples included more than 250,000 participants from 38 countries. The meta-analysis represented a quantitative integration of all the studies collected to estimate the effect of intergroup contact on prejudice reduction. These studies looked at attitudes toward racial and ethnic groups, the elderly, gays and lesbians, and people with disabilities. Five results are noteworthy. First, the overall results indicate that greater levels of contact between groups are associated with less out-group prejudice. However, some studies do show an increase in prejudice, thus implying a need for a careful consideration of the [Page 1229]context of contact. Second, they asked whether the type of contact matters and found that cross-group friendships that allow for substantive and meaningful contact were most effective in reducing prejudice while superficial contact was not effective. Within friendships, studies that looked at behavioral measures—disclosing information, spending time together—have greater effects than reports of simply feeling close to the friend. Third, positive effects toward out-group members within the contact situation are sometimes generalized to other out-group members. Fourth, situations of contact that were voluntary and involuntary did not produce different effects. Fifth, more positive effects were found on affective measures of prejudice reduction (emotions and favorability) than on cognitive outcomes (beliefs and stereotypes).

How does contact produce its effects? There is an increasing focus on understanding how intergroup contact produces the outcomes of prejudice reduction; that is, the processes of prejudice change. Two sets of processes have been studied—cognitive and affective. Cognitive processes, such as knowledge about the out-group, do show a negative relation with prejudice, while affective processes, such as anxiety and empathy, show stronger effects. Not many studies have looked at the two sets of processes together.

Before making the turn to link intergroup contact to social justice, it is important to understand how status matters in contact. Interestingly, out of 713 independent samples, only 132 looked at effects of contact on minority groups. That means more than 85% of the studies looked at the benefits of contact for majority groups. The meta-analysis revealed that, overall, the effect of contact is positive but weaker for minority groups compared to majority groups.

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