Intergroup Contact

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Intergroup Contact
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Outline

• 'Classic' statements of the contact hypothesis
• Update and re-evaluation
• Limitations of the contact hypothesis
• Possible solutions
• Definition of the contact hypothesis
• interaction between individuals belonging to
  different social groups will reduce ethnic
  prejudice and intergroup tension (Hewstone
  Brown 1986)

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What can change? Hewstone 2003

• Attitudes towards outgroup
• More positive?
• Or at least less negative?
• Perception of variablity of outgroup
• More heterogenous (varied)
• Or at least less homogenous
• Increased forgiveness for past misdeeds
• Increased trust

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"Classic Statements"

• Allport (1954)
• contact could lead to an increase in prejudice as
  well as its reduction
• the outcome of contact will be favourable when
• the participants are of equal status
• pursuing common goals
• cooperativey
• backed by social and institutional support

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Allports Taxonomy

• Quantitative aspects of contact
• Frequency
• Duration
• No of persons involved
• Variety
• Status aspects
• Minority member inferior status
• Minority member equal status
• Minority member superior status
• Group as a whole varies in status
• Role aspects
• Competitive vs. cooperative relationship?
• Superordinate or subordinate role relation?

• Social atmosphere surrounding contact
• Is segregation prevalent or is egalitarianism
  expected?
• Voluntary vs. involuntary?
• Real vs. artificial?
• Perceived in terms of intergroup relations or
  not?
• Typical v. exceptional?
• Important and intimate vs. trivial transient?
• Personality of individual involved
• Level of prejudice
• Previous experience with group, strength of
  stereotype
• Areas of contact
• Occupational
• Residential etc.

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E.g. Desforges et al (1991)

• Learning strategy study with mental heath patient
  confederate
• Either worked alone or cooperatively
• Cooperation improved attitude towards partner and
  social category

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2. Cook (1978, 1984)

• outgroup member should disconfirm stereotype
• high acquaintance potential
• These conditions maximise likelihood that
  similarities in values and beliefs will be
  perceived, and will provide a basis for
  interpersonal attraction

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Update 1

• Original CH has been added to to extent that it
  is overly specific (Hogg Vaughan) and has
  lost explanatory power
• Many of the conditions facilitating rather than
  essential (Pettigrew, 1998)
• But evidence pretty good for Allports main 4
  conditions (Dovidio et al, 2003)

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Update2

• Recent meta-analysis (Pettigrew Tropp, 2000) of
  500 studies confirms that it generally works
  inverse correlation between contact and prejudice
• Not much longitudinal research but enough
  evidence to suggest that relationship runs from
  contact to improved attitude rather than vice
  versa

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How does contact work?

• Pettigrew (1998) 4 mechanisms
• Learning about the outgroup
• Behaviour driven attitude change
• Generating affective ties
• Ingroup reappraisal
• Also (Dovidio et al, 2003, Stangor 2004)
• Reducing anxiety
• Changing social norms
• Empathy/ perspective taking

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Extended Contact Effect

• Wright et al (1997)
• Intergroup attitudes can improve if people
  witness rewarding cross-group friendships between
  others

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Limitations of the Contact Hypothesis

• from social identity theory (Hewstone Brown
  1986)
• 1. Assumption that greater knowledge reduces
  prejudice
• Emphasis on similarities may help, but what about
  differences?
• Can you present differences in a non- evaluative
  way?
• Contact may increase the need for group
  distinctiveness
• Jaspars Warnaeon (1982)
• intergroup hostility may be caused by factors
  other than ignorance
• categorisation alone may be enough (SIT)

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2. Interpersonal vs. Intergroup Contact

• Is the contact perceived in terms of intergroup
  relations or not?
• similarity between groups encourages
  discrimination in order to preserve
  distinctiveness
• Similarity is attractive in interpersonal
  relationships but not in intergroup relationships

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3. Generalisation of Attitude Change

• beyond the situation of contact?
• Finchilescu (1988)
• to other members of the groups not actually
  present?
• participants should see each other a
  representatives of their groups, and not as
  "exceptions to the rule"
• Wilder (84) varied
• a) prototypicality of outgroup member
• b) pleasantsupportive vs criticalunpleasant

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Wilder 1984
attitude towards outgroup
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Hewstone Brown (1986)

• as long as individuals are interacting as
  individuals, no reason to expect generalisation
  to other members of group
• unless contact is intergroup, gains will be at
  interpersonal level, and leave intergroup
  relations unchanged
• NB Less pessimistic about generalisation in more
  recent work!
• But continues to endorse importance of
  maintaining group boundaries (e.g. 2003)

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Possible Solutions

• 1. Decategorisation Brewer Miller (84)
• Replace category based with interpersonal
  relations
• personalisation reduce importance of group
  membership so that individual relationships can
  develop
• differentiation within outgroup category, so that
  outgroup members are seen as different from one
  another

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2. Mutual Intergroup Differentiation

• Hewstone Brown (1986)
• Avoid depriving groups of their valued social
  identities.
• "comparative interdependence" each group
  views itself positively, and holds ve
  stereotypes of the outgroup, consistent with that
  groups' own stereotype

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3. Recategorisation (Gaertner et al.)

• Ps initially in two groups of 3
• then
• 1/3 recategorised into group of 6
• 1/3 control - remain as 2 groups of 3
• 1/3 recategorised as 6 separate individuals

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Hornsey Hogg 2000, 2003

• Balance of super-ordinate identity and subgroup
  distinctiveness may be best
• Multicultural/pluralistic approach
• Blend of MID and Recategorisation?

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Concluding comments

• Contact takes TIME to work (Stangor, 2003)
• Above interventions may work complementarily and
  sequentially be
• Personalisation first so you recognise
  similarities and build up friendships
• Then make groups salient so get generalisation
• Then can recategorise if appro. (Pettigrew, 1998)