Prejudice and the Contact Hypothesis Flashcards
Prejudice
“thinking ill of others without sufficient warrant” - the classic definition (Allport, 1954, p.6)
- More likely to remember information about a person that “fits the stereotype”
The Contact Hypothesis
“may be reduced by equal status contact between majority and minority groups in pursuit of common goals” (Gordon Allport, 1954)
Hostility between groups is fed by unfamiliarity and separation
Common goals should ideally be something both groups want, but neither can achieve alone.
Allport’s (1954) four ingredients:
Social and institutional support
- Support for mixing at a higher level could be encouraged by government
Acquaintance potential
Personalised contact rather than brief/formal contact
Equal status
Contact should not reinforce power differences
Cooperative interaction
Competitive activities worsen relations (cf. Summer Camp)
Superordinate goals appeal to both groups and cannot be achieved without cooperation
Support for Contact Hypothesis
Meta-analysis of 515 studies (!) shows highly significant
Contact interactions understood differently by privileged vs disadvantaged groups
*Disadvantaged groups expect discrimination in contact
, Hewstone & Swart (2011)
Contact H1: Critique
Assumption that stereotypes will be disproved
Individual regarded as an exception (Cook, 1985)
Group membership less salient as person is known better
Guided discussion used as ‘cognitive booster’ to explicitly connect negative effects of discrimination with liked out-group member
Indirect Contact: Extension of Contact H1
Segregation & conflict may prevent direct contact
Types of Indirect Contact
Extended Contact – exposure to in-group members who have out-group friends
Imagined Contact (Turner & Crisp, 2010)
Non muslim participants asked to
1. Imagine interacting with a Muslim person
2. think about Muslims (control)
Islamophobia measured with an IAT (implicit association task)
People in imagined contact condition showed out-group favouring bias (so implicit prejudice greatly reduced)
The Jigsaw Classroom ( Contact Hypothesis )
Technique developed by Elliot Aronson (1970s)
To promote cooperation & reduce hostility in the classroom
Just in jigsaw, every students part is essential, this is what makes this strategy effective
Within the group, students actually start to listen to, respect, and like one another (Blaney et al., 1977; Aronson et al., 2013).
Mutual Intergroup Differentiation Model
Equal status contact between salient groups cannot reduce bias when those groups are threatened by contact (Hewstone & Brown, 1986; 2005).
Need for inclusion and differentiation
Cooperation be complementary?
Group distinctiveness but without negative comparisons.
Superordinate goal but task split between groups
Allows some of the out-group’s differences to be appreciated (Brewer, 1991)
Limitations of Mutual Intergroup Differentiation Model
Not all categories are equally meaningful.
Lack of clarity about which contact strategies used
How realistic and does it suggest options?
How well does the contact hypothesis cope with intersectionality?
Multiple Groups & Intersectionality
People have multiple group memberships
Dual categorisation and hyphenated identities allows inclusion in superordinate category
Cross-cutting between different domains, awareness of multiple social identities —-> Low loyalty to one.
(Marcus-Newhall et al., 1993)
