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The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion

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Title: The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion


1
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • An important prediction made by social scientists
    decades ago was that increased interracial
    contact would result in more positive racial
    attitudes.
  • Racial attitudes difficult to change. Formed
    early on, though change in explicit attitudes
    reported (Bobo).
  • Prejudice was primarily based on misinformation
    and ignorance due to lack of interracial contact.
  • Also, lack of institutional support for positive
    intergroup relations divergent group interests
    and goals, absence of shared identities.

2
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • Solution? Expose people to accurate information
    about outgroups, and stereotyping and prejudice
    should be reduced.
  • Represents an information-oriented approach and
    implies that contact between members of different
    groups will reduce prejudice.

3
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • e.g., led many social scientists to predict that
    gradual desegregation would increase contact, and
    lead to reduced prejudice over time (originally
    suggested by Gunnar Myrdal, 1944, in The American
    Dilemma
  • Some early findings supported this idea.
    Stouffer, et al (1949) The American Soldier

4
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • e.g, RE integration of the armed forces,
    attitudes changed the most among White soldiers
    in units that worked closely with Blacks.
  • Explanation? maybe had to do with the
    unlearning of stereotypes which came with
    increased familiarity.

5
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • Deutsch Collins (1951) housing experiments
    provided support White and Black families
    experimentally assigned to either integrated or
    segregated buildings.
  • Whites assigned to integrated buildings showed
    more positive changes in their attitudes toward
    Blacks.

6
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • But not all the theorizing or empirical evidence
    was supportive of this conclusion about contact
    and reduced prejudice.
  • Allport (1954), The Nature of Prejudice
  • ?Categories and stereotypes tend to be preserved.
  • ?Stereotype-disconfirming info is ignored or
    forgotten, or assimilated to the initial
    stereotype.

7
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • ?Disconfirming individuals are subtyped in
    order to preserve the overall stereotype.
  • Schneiders (2004) review quite a bit of
    evidence supports these claims.
  • Stephan (1978) on the effects of desegregation at
    the local level
  • ?reviewed all of the post-Brown v. Board of
    Education research on the effects of
    desegregation.

8
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • ?Most studies showed little decrease in prejudice
    following desegregation, and some even showed an
    increase.
  • ?Black kids did not even feel better about
    themselves following desegregation, in most
    cases.
  • So, what do we make of the contact hypothesis?

9
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • Most researchers began to realize that intergroup
    contact per se was not enough to reduce
    prejudice.
  • Contact must occur under certain well-defined
    conditions in order to successfully change racial
    attitudes for the better.
  • Allports (1954) hypothesis about intergroup
    contact

10
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • Equal status within the situation (not coming
    into the situation).
  • Common goals (active goal-oriented effort).
  • Intergroup cooperation (must be an interdependent
    effort without intergroup competition.
  • Institutional support (support of authorities,
    law, or custom).

11
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • Pettigrew (1998) reviewed all existing work on
    the contact hypothesis. As before, studies of
    contact produced mixed results, i.e., did not
    always result in more positive racial attitudes.
  • However, in study conditions where more of
    Allports four criteria were met, more positive
    attitude change occurred.

12
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • Empirical Support
  • Pettigrew (1997, 1998 Pettigrew Tropp, 2000)
    Contact based on personal friendships is
    particularly effective in reducing prejudice.
  • Friendship an effective form of contact. Likely
    generates positive orientations (e.g.,
    perspective-taking and empathy), and reduces
    negative emotions like anxiety (important
    mediators of the effects of contact according to
    Brown Hewstone, 2005).

13
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • Hewstone, Cairns, Voci, Hamberger, Niens
    (2006) analyzed random sample surveys (in 1989,
    1991, 2000) to test contact hypothesis on
    intergroup attitudes of Catholics and Protestants
    in Northern Ireland.
  • In first survey, found that contact was
    positively related to attitudes toward
    denominational mixing (controlled for prior
    schooling, education level, social class).

14
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • In 2nd survey, found that intergroup contact was
    positively related to outgroup attitudes, but
    also with greater foregiveness and greater trust
    (even among those who reported the worst
    experiences with sectarian conflict). Did not get
    at which aspects of contact contribute positively.

15
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • Pettigrew Tropp (2006) meta-analysis greater
    intergroup contact is generally associated with
    lower intergroup prejudice.
  • Rule out participant selection (prejudiced
    people avoid contact with outgroups) publication
    bias lack of generalization (in fact, wide range
    of effects) that less rigorous studies account
    for magnitude of contact effects other study and
    participant features (e.g., quality measures,
    true experiments yield larger effects). Mean rs
    -.205 to -.214 (large samples, 94 show effect).

16
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • Key Structured optimal contact yield greater
    reductions of prejudice than do other samples
    (Table 5), moderated by method factors like
    better control groups, measures. But key
    conditions not essential to get the effect.
    Institutional support and sanction key condition.
  • Key Effect sizes of contact-prejudice effect
    varies in relation to different target groups.
    Effect holds up for early (before 1980) vs. late
    (1979) studies.

17
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • Tropp Pettigrew (2005) meta-analysis, 515
    studies from early 40s to 2000. 713 independent
    samples.
  • Does group status moderate effectiveness of
    intergroup contact?
  • Tropp, L.R., Pettigrew, T.F. (2005).
    Relationship between intergroup contact and
    prejudice among minority and majority status
    groups. Psychological Science, 16(12) , 951-957

18
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • Test whether the 4 optimal conditions in the
    contact hypothesis will be esp. effective in
    promoting positive intergroup attitudes among
    majority status groups vs. minority status
    groups.
  • 2 key findings
  • 1. Regression analyses do differences in group
    status significantly predict the
    contact-prejudice relationship?

19
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • Yes, relationships weaker among minority status
    groups, above and beyond several relevant
    methodological variables (e.g., type of study,
    type and quality of measures, etc.).
  • 2. Does a global measure of optimal contact
    conditions predict stronger contact effects for
    both minority and majority groups?

20
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • Each sample in meta-analysis rated as to whether
    the contact situation was structured in line with
    Allports propose optimal conditions.
  • Finding that this global measure significantly
    predicted stronger contact-prejudice
    relationships among members of majority status
    groups, but not minority status groups. Effects
    of the on-going histories of devaluation?

21
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • Caveat the meta-analysis does not allow you to
    specify the processes by which group devaluation
    accounts for weaker contact-prejudice effects for
    members of minority status groups.
  • Pettigrew (1998) need to go beyond when contact
    matters, to how and why. What are the
    inter-related processes of change that are
    crucial to understanding the effects of
    intergroup contact?

22
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • Pettigrews reformulated contact theory involving
    decategorization, reduced prejudice which
    generalizes, and then recategorization.
    Familiarity breeds liking.
  • Recategorization research by Dovidio, Gaertner
    and colleagues recategorization a key factor in
    getting contact to work. Need to foster
    superordinate identities, which most settings do
    not foster.
  • Aronsons jigsaw classroom method but does it
    generalize from individuals to target group to
    other outgroups?

23
The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion
  • Do contact effects generalize beyond the
    immediate setting?
  • Situational across situations.
  • Individual to group from specific outgroup
    members with whom one has had contact to the
    broader outgroup.
  • To uninvolved groups generalize to other
    outgroups not involved in the contact.
  • Pettigrew Tropp (2006) MA Yes
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