Outline The Contact Hypothesis For Intergroup Biases

The contact hypothesis states that intergroup bias can be reduced by there being contact between social outgroups in appropriate environments. According to Oskamp and Jones (2000), this is the most widely used psychological intervention for reducing prejudice. It has been suggested by Allport (1954) that the conditions needed for this to work are as follows: equality between the two groups has to be a social norm, as well as equality of status between the two groups and thirdly, there must be cooperation and the contact must be to reach a common goal. Research into cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) found that when your behaviours and attitudes do not match up there is ‘internal conflict’. Therefore we align our attitudes to match our behaviours
to prevent the unpleasant conflict; it would seem that if the social behaviour is different to that of the law or policy, this policy changes to match the attitude. For example, women did not always have the vote, but as attitudes changed, then so did the law to fit this societal feeling. The law and social attitude are paralleled, but with a few months or a year or so apart, it is suggested that it is social change that bring about a legal change, but research suggests that it can be legal change, the behavioural change, that influences the attitude change.
This would have implications for the contact hypothesis because it focuses on changing attitudes towards the outgroup to reduce prejudice, to then change the behaviours between the groups in the real world. If behaviours can change attitudes then other interventions could be developed. Status between the two groups has to be equal as well, for example, if the minority group is in a position where they are seen as ‘lesser’ than the majority group then the negative stereotypes held by the majority group will remain, while the minority group may well still feel inferior and therefore hostile toward the other group and prejudice from both groups will be intact. Despite Allport’s research findings that the third condition was that both groups has to have common goals and cooperation in reaching these goals, Blanchard (1975) found this was only relevant when the minority group was successful in reaching the task’s goal. That is not to say cooperation is not needed in reaching the goal, this is still very
important.
After much criticism, there have been many developments on to the conditions needed for a successful encounter to reduce prejudice by having contact.
However, the study then became so unattainable in reaching all the criteria, as it could barely be applied to any groups. Some of the conditions deem to be important were both groups had to speak the same language, have a good economy and volunteer to take part in the intervention. It has since been found in a meta-analysis by Pettigrew and Tropp (2006) that the original Allport conditions are most effective in reaching a positive outcome after the contact, but even then prejudice can be reduced without these conditions, showing none of the conditions are essential. Even with all the conditions developed, it remained that the contact hypothesis never stated how the contact could be applied to generalise once the intervention itself was over. It could be that a ‘category based prejudice’ remained as an individual might think that despite the positive contact they had with someone from the outgroup, this opinion does not apply to everyone else from that group. This criticism has now been addressed, if the members in the encounter are seen as typical and representative of their group, then the contact can be generalised (Hewstone and Brown, 1986). For this to work, everyone has to be aware of the group differences though, and aware of their group membership, ignoring differences won’t be effective but if these differences are seen
positively, the contact is very effective.
Researchers have delved deeper into studying the effectiveness of contact reducing prejudice between opposing groups and have found that out of all participants, those who were friends with people in minority outgroups had less prejudice than other people (Pettigrew, 1997) and generally have more positive attitudes to people in outgroups, this is known as ‘cross-group friendships’. This would suggest contact does help reduce prejudice, however, Pettigrew also found that just being neighbours or co-workers showed a weaker relationship with reduced prejudice. This has helped develop interventions to focus on friendship building. ‘Intergroup anxiety’ is one explanation for how cross-group friendships results in reduced prejudice. Stephan and Stephan (1985) define intergroup anxiety as ‘the negative arousal experienced at the prospect of contact by individuals who have little experience with the outgroup’. The relationships with intergroup anxiety is that the more friends someone has in a specific outgroup, the less anxiety they have about interacting with other people in that group because they have generalised positive attitudes, and are aware of the ‘outgroup variability’ (the different types of people within that community). The other explanation for how cross-group friendships reduce prejudice is ‘self-discloser’. The more someone discloses information to you, the more empathy you feel towards them and trust is built up when you share information with another person about yourself, so a positive attitude is formed. The more friends someone has in an outgroup, the more self-disclosure that will occur.