Intergroup Contact Theory

History and Background

The newly emerging discipline of social psychology of the 1930s and 1940s soon began to study intergroup contact. This interest followed from the field's emphases on intergroup relations and interactions between people. Researchers often exploited field situations of unfolding intergroup change. Thus, after the racial desegregation of the U.S. Merchant Marine in 1948, it was found that the more voyages the White seamen took with Blacks, the more positive their racial attitudes [Page 469]became. Similarly, White police in Philadelphia who worked with Black colleagues differed sharply from other White police. They objected less to Blacks joining their previously all-White police districts, teaming with a Black partner, and taking orders from qualified Black officers.

In 1947, the Social Science Research Council asked sociologist Robin Williams to review what was known about group relations. In his report, Williams presented the initial formulation of intergroup contact theory. He stressed that many variables influence a contact's effects on prejudice. In particular, he held that intergroup contact will maximally reduce prejudice when (1) the two groups share similar status, interests, and tasks; (2) the situation fosters personal, intimate intergroup contact; (3) the participants do not fit the stereotyped conceptions of their groups; and (4) the activities cut across group lines.

By 1950, research had tested the theory more rigorously. Major studies of racially segregated and desegregated public housing projects by New York researchers provided the strongest evidence. Striking differences emerged in interviews of White “housewives” in the two sets of projects. The desegregated White women had far more optimal contact with their Black neighbors, held them in higher esteem, and expressed greater support of interracial housing. The intimacy and frequency of the interracial contact were also important.

Armed with Williams's initial effort and the rich findings of the New York studies, Allport introduced in The Nature of Prejudice the most influential statement of contact theory, which guided contact research for five decades. He noted the contrasting effects of intergroup contact, which usually reduced but sometimes exacerbated prejudice. To explain these findings, Allport adopted a “positive factors” approach. Reduced prejudice will result, he held, when four positive features of the contact situation are present: (1) equal status of the groups in the situation, (2) common goals, (3) intergroup cooperation, and (4) the support of authorities, law, or custom.

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