The Contact Hypothesis and Persuasion

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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

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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).

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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.

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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).

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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).

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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

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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?

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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?

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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?

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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?

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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?

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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