Contact Hypothesis Flashcards
What is the Contact Hypothesis?
Allport (1954)’s 4 ingredients?
The Contact Hypothesis is very useful in shifting prejudice.
Allport (1954) proposed that to improve relations in groups experiencing conflict, contact should be used to reduce prejudice (the ill thinking of others without sufficient warrant).
The formulation of the four necessary conditions; that is, that ‘positive effects of intergroup contact occur only in situations marked by four key conditions
1. Equal Group Status: the two groups need to perceive equal status, this can effectively promote positive attitudes even when the groups initially perceived different status. This is difficult to establish in the workplace where hierarchical situations are often unavoidable.
2.Cooperative Interaction: all goals should be based around cooperation between individuals, competiton worsens relations e.g. Sherifs Robbers Cave Study.
3.Social/Institutional Support: When supported by authorities, intergroup contact shows more positive effects.
4.Aquaintance potential: personalised contact rather than brief or formal contact which has to be emotionally meaningful and socially rewarding. this experience can generalised to the whole group and allow the individual to gain information disconfirming stereotypes.
Meta-analytic testing suggests that these conditions are indeed beneficial but not essential for reducing prejudice (Pettigrew & Troop, 2006a,b). Rather than being necessary, they prove to be facilitating conditions.
50 years of the Contact Hypothesis
Tredoux (2007)
Concluded that some articles have shown that minority and majority group members may have quite different understandings of the meaning of intergroup contact.
Minority group members may, for instance, view intergroup contact as a way of disguising deep-rooted inequality. They may also desire to live out their difference, and resist the integration they see enforced on them.
Assumptions that stereotypes will be disproved however this may not be the case? Individuals also may be regarded as an exception to the ‘norm’, it’s not confirmed that effects will be generalised and the stereotype will be disproved.
Other articles point to the depth of particular forms of intergroup contact and segregation in ethnocentric contexts, which appear self-reproducing, and highly unaffected by breaching.
This is not to deny the significance of intergroup contact, and its potential to transform intergroup relations, but rather to point to the importance of contextualising it, and understanding it as part of a much larger social and historical matter. We know more about when the contact hypothesis works but not enough about how it works the underlying psychological processes?)
Changing attitudes…introduction to the contact hypothesis
Intergroup hostility is relatively easy to initiate but harder to extinguish.
Devine (1989) found that Implicit associations tests have demonstrated that individuals can override negative stereotypes. Even if IAT scores suggest knowledge of as stereotype and cognitive delay in reaction time, its still evident in responses that these stereotypes can be over-ridden.
Williams (1947) any non-competitive atmosphere that provides contact between groups can increase intergroup attraction.
Indirect contact/ Extended contact
Pettigrew et al (2007)
Using a large, probability survey of German adults, they explore the relationship between direct and indirect contact.
They found that direct and indirect contact are highly interrelated, and both are negatively related to prejudices against foreigners and Muslims living in Germany. Direct and indirect contact together enhance the prediction of prejudice.
The direct and indirect contact are shaped by similar social and personality variables.
Opportunity for contact is important, while authoritarians avoid contact. Their effects are mediated by threat, but here we find the one difference between the two types.
Direct contact is negatively related to both individual and collective threat. Indirect contact is also negatively related to collective threat but only slightly related to individual threat.
Extended contact serves as a middle man, although it’s not quite as powerful as direct contact, it can have a significant effect on reducing prejudice and anxiety towards mixing groups.
Vezzali et al (2014) Extended contact hypothesis
Strategies based on direct contact are sometimes difficult to implement, scholars have more recently focused on indirect contact. An effective form of indirect contact is extended contact. To summarise, the studies reviewed indicate that there are several moderators of the effects of indirect contact.
The three types of moderators (contextual conditions, situational perceptions, individual differences) are shared by both extended contact and vicarious contact.
For instance, since membership prominence should be higher when observing a cross-group friendship than when merely knowing about it, membership salience should be a stronger moderator for extended than for vicarious contact (where group membership should be chronically salient to a greater extent).
Wright et al (1997) Indirect contact: Extended contact hypothesis
Wright et al. (1997) suggested that direct contact is not necessary to reduce prejudice. Instead, they hypothesised that merely knowing of or observing at least one in-group member who has a close relationship with one or more out-group members can have beneficial effect on relations between groups.
Extended contact is knowing that in-group members have contact with out-group members.
In the case of extended contact, participants rely on indirect information on the cross-group experiences of in-group members.
For instance, extended contact was operationalised by asking participants to disclose their cross-group experiences to in-group members (Wright et al., 1997, Study 3).
Imagined Contact 2
Turner and Crisp (2010)
As contact isn’t always strategically manageable, Turner and Crisp examined the impact of contact‐related mental imagery on implicit prejudice as measured by the implicit association test.
In two studies we have shown, for the first time, that imagining intergroup contact can reduce implicit prejudice. In Study 1, participants who imagined contact with an elderly person showed less implicit bias in favour of the young over the elderly compared to participants in the control condition. In Study 2, non‐Muslim participants who imagined contact with a Muslim stranger showed significantly less implicit bias in favour of non‐Muslims over Muslims compared to participants in a control condition who simply thought about Muslims as a group.
We believe that imagining intergroup contact changes explicit out‐group attitudes by activating conscious processes that parallel the processes involved in actual intergroup contact, for example thinking about what they would learn from the encounter and how that encounter would make them feel. In contrast, imagined contact may affect implicit out‐group attitudes as a direct consequence of exposure, consistent with contemporary dual models of attitude change (e.g. Fazio & Olson, 2003; Wilson et al., 2000).
+ Imagined contact is a powerful intervention to reduce prejudice. Moreover, it should also leave us optimistic about the potential of imagined contact to be used as an applied intervention to reduce prejudice even in contexts characterised by tense intergroup relations.
Support for the extended contact hypothesis
Tausch et al. (2011) provided support for the hypothesis that extended contact has greater impact when the relationship with the in-group member having out-group contact is close.
Their data came from a large cross-sectional survey of Catholic and Protestant adults in Northern Ireland. They found that extended contact was associated with greater out-group trust only when it was via family members and in-group friends.
Moreover, they demonstrated that the strength of the extended contact effect depended on the rated closeness to the observed in-group member. Specifically, a moderation analysis showed that extended contact was associated with increased out-group trust only when closeness to the in-group target was high, irrespective of whether the in-group member was a neighbour, a work colleague, a friend, or a family member.
Introducing Indirect Contact
One of the most significant recent advances in contact research is the finding that perceivers need not have actually experienced contact with the out‐group themselves to develop more positive out‐group attitudes. Two types of indirect intergroup contact have been identified to date:
1. Extended contact and 2. Imagined contact.
Weakness of extended contact & Introduce imagined contact
Extended contact has a distinct advantage over direct, face‐to‐face contact. Direct contact can only be used as an intervention to reduce prejudice when group members have the opportunity for contact in the first place (e.g. Phinney, Ferguson, & Tate, 1997; Turner, Hewstone et al., 2007).
Unfortunately, however, there are many examples of opposing groups that have few such opportunities (e.g. Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland; Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East).
Extended contact, on the other hand, may be especially useful in situations where there is less opportunity for contact, as it implies that actual experience of contact with out‐groups is not a necessary component of contact interventions.
The importance of this basic idea for policy makers and educators seeking to develop interventions designed to change out‐group attitudes cannot be understated because it suggests that contact may be a far more powerful and flexible means of improving intergroup relations than previously thought.
Imagined contact considers whether it is even necessary to know in‐group members who have friends in the out‐group in order for contact to exert a positive effect.
Support for Imagined Contact
Mental imagery has been found to elicit similar emotional and motivational responses as the real experience (Dadds, Bovbjerg, Redd, & Cutmore, 1997)
Research has found that after imagining a (counter‐stereotypic) strong woman, participants demonstrated less implicit stereotypes than participants who engaged in neutral or stereotypic mental imagery (imagining a weak woman or a strong man), or participants who had not engaged in any imagery (Blair, Ma, & Lenton, 2001).
Imagined Contact 1
Turner, Crisp et al (2007)
They investigated whether simply imagining contact with outgroup members can improve intergroup attitudes. In
Experiment 1, young participants who imagined talking to an elderly person subsequently showed lower levels of intergroup bias than participants who imagined an outdoor scene.
In Experiment 2, young participants who imagined talking to an elderly person subsequently showed lower levels of intergroup bias than participants who simply thought about elderly people, ruling out a priming explanation for our findings.
In Experiment 3, heterosexual men who imagined talking to a homosexual man subsequently evaluated homosexual men more positively, perceived there to be greater variability among them, and experienced less intergroup anxiety compared to a control group. The effect of imagined contact on out-group evaluations was mediated by reduced intergroup anxiety.
These findings suggest that imagining intergroup contact could represent a viable alternative for reducing prejudice where actual contact between groups is impractical.
The future of contact?
Does the contact hypothesis focus too much on higher status, privileged groups ?? Does it overlook actual inequalities and weaken the identity of those who are fighting for change? All good change in society comes with being fought and protested for, is the contact hypothesis just diluting this?
The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love and Outgroup Hate? Brewer (1999)
Allport (1954) recognised that attachment to one’s in-groups does not necessarily require hostility toward out-groups. Yet research into prejudice presumes that in-group love and out-group hate are reciprocally related.
Findings from both cross-cultural research and laboratory experiments support the alternative view that in-group identification is independent of negative attitudes toward out-groups and inter-group hostility is a motivated by preferential treatment of in-group members rather than hostility towards out-group members.
-This article reviews research and theory on the motivations for maintenance of in-group boundaries and the implications of in-group boundary protection for intergroup relations, conflict, and conflict prevention.
- Many discriminatory perceptions and behaviours are motivated primarily by the desire to promote and maintain positive relationships within the in-group rather than by any direct antagonism toward out-groups. In-group love is not a necessary precursor of out-group hate.
-However, the very factors that make in-group attachment and allegiance important to individuals also provide a fertile ground for antagonism and distrust of those outside the in-group boundaries.
Decategorisation & Recategorisation
De-categorisation aims to get away from the group dimension and focusing on people as individuals.
Pettigrew (1998) found that friendship is a very effective way of dissolving prejudice. However, friendship insinuates openness for contact previously.
Re-categorisation aims to reduced the in-group/out-group distinction. Although, this can be quite had to approach in the real world.
+Mutual differentiation satisfies out need to belong to a group and also respect other groups. Super-ordinate goals allow this.
- De and re-categorisation threaten existing identities, so they can meet resistance or fail to produced lasting change.
