Bridging the Divide: The Contact Hypothesis and Its Conditions for Success

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Bridging the Divide: The Contact Hypothesis and Its Conditions for Success

Advanced Social Psychology · Chapter 6: Gender, Race, and Reducing PrejudiceSection 6.6 · lesson 38 of 8511 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

A small, reliable effect - and the condition under which it does harm.

  • State Allport's contact hypothesis and its 4 conditions
  • Summarize Pettigrew and Tropp's meta-analytic findings
  • Distinguish direct, extended, and imagined contact
  • Evaluate when contact backfires or sedates

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Everything said in the video, section by section (1,386 words). Read along, or search it.

Gender, Race, and Reducing Prejudice

Bridging the Divide

The contact hypothesis is the most tested proposition in this whole field. It is also the most misquoted. The popular version says that if people just met each other, prejudice would fall. Allport never said that, and he said so explicitly. This section gives you the real claim, with its four conditions attached. Then the meta-analytic verdict, across five hundred fifteen studies. Then three routes that do not require you to be in the room at all. And finally the condition under which contact does active harm. That last part is the reason to take this section seriously. A successful contact intervention can reduce pressure for the reform that was needed.

Allport, 1954

The Proposition, Stated Carefully

Gordon Allport's The Nature of Prejudice appeared in nineteen fifty-four. It advanced one of the most extensively tested propositions in social psychology. Under appropriate conditions, contact between members of different groups reduces prejudice. Now hold on to that qualifying phrase. Under appropriate conditions. The proposition was not that any contact reduces prejudice. Allport explicitly recognized that ill-structured contact can entrench bias. The claim was always conditional, and the conditions are the content. This hypothesis has carried an enormous amount of applied weight. It has guided desegregation policy. And organizational diversity programs, and post-conflict reconciliation efforts. For seven decades now.

Four Conditions

How the Contact Must Be Structured

Allport specified four conditions under which contact should reduce prejudice. The first is equal status within the contact situation. The groups must encounter each other as status-equal participants. Regardless of their wider societal positions. Read that again, because the distinction is easy to miss. Equal status within the situation, not equal status in society. Which is what makes the condition achievable by design. And also what makes it easy to violate by accident. The second condition is common goals. Participants must share an objective requiring the involvement of both groups. The third is intergroup cooperation. The goal must be pursued through cooperation rather than competition. The fourth is institutional support. The contact must be sanctioned by legitimate authorities, laws, or custom. Signaling that the contact and its norms are themselves legitimate.

Pettigrew And Tropp, 2006

The Meta-Analysis

Pettigrew and Tropp published the definitive evaluation in two thousand six. Five hundred fifteen studies. More than two hundred fifty thousand participants. Across thirty-eight nations. Three principal conclusions emerged, and each one matters. First, intergroup contact typically reduces prejudice. With a mean effect size of about negative zero point two one. Second, Allport's four conditions facilitate prejudice reduction. But they are not strictly necessary. Contact reduces prejudice even under suboptimal conditions. Though more strongly when the conditions are met. Third, contact effects generalize. Contact with specific outgroup members reduces prejudice against the outgroup as a whole. And contact with one outgroup can extend to attitudes toward other outgroups. That last pattern is called secondary transfer.

Reading The Effect

Small, Reliable, and Cumulative

The effect size deserves its own slide, because it gets misreported both ways. Negative zero point two one is not a large effect. A single contact intervention will not transform an attitude. Overclaiming here damages the credibility of the whole literature. But it is also genuinely real. Reliable across five hundred fifteen studies, and thirty-eight nations. And it compounds across many contact opportunities. A small per-encounter effect, repeated often, is a policy-relevant effect. Now the second conclusion, which is the surprising one. Allport's conditions turn out to be facilitating rather than necessary. That is a stronger result than the original hypothesis, not a weaker one. Real-world contact rarely meets all four conditions. And it still helps.

Mediators

Why Contact Works

Why does contact reduce prejudice? Pettigrew and Tropp followed up in two thousand eight. They identified three principal mediators. The first is reduced intergroup anxiety. Contact gives participants experience of relaxed cross-group interaction. Which weakens the anticipatory anxiety that fuels avoidance in the first place. The second is increased empathy and perspective-taking. Contact creates opportunities to access the outgroup's experience. And their emotional standpoint. The third is increased knowledge. Contact corrects stereotype-consistent beliefs through direct evidence. Now the ranking, which is the actual finding. Reduced anxiety carries the largest single mediating weight. With empathy a close second. The knowledge pathway is reliable, but smaller than originally assumed. So contact works less by informing people than by calming them.

Extended Contact

You Do Not Have to Be There

Wright, Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe, and Ropp proposed something in nineteen ninety-seven. Something that sounds far too weak to work. They called it the extended contact hypothesis. Merely knowing that an ingroup member has a close cross-group friendship. That alone is sufficient to reduce prejudice. No contact of your own is required at all. The proposition has been supported across numerous studies. And it is practically important, for a structural reason. It extends the reach of friendship effects. To people who do not themselves have any outgroup contact. Which is precisely the population that segregated environments produce.

Imagined Contact

Simulation, and Its Limits

Crisp and Turner pushed further still, in two thousand nine. Their imagined contact hypothesis is the most minimal version available. Even mentally simulating a positive cross-group interaction reduces prejudice. In the short term, at least. And it increases willingness to engage in actual contact. Meta-analytic evidence supports a small but reliable imagined-contact effect. With one qualification that determines how you should use it. Effects are typically larger for behavioral intentions. Larger than for deeply held attitudes. So place it correctly in any program design. Imagined contact is most useful as preparation for real contact. Not as a substitute for it. Used as a substitute, it is the cheapest way to look like you are doing something.

The Forms

Five Routes, Graded by Evidence

Put the forms side by side, graded by strength of evidence. Direct contact is face-to-face interaction with outgroup members. It has the strongest evidence, and the meta-analytic effect we discussed. Cross-group friendship is sustained close direct contact. Its effects are larger than acquaintance contact. That is worth noticing, because it tells you what is doing the work. Duration and closeness, rather than mere exposure. Extended contact is knowing that an ingroup friend has an outgroup friend. It shows a reliable effect across studies. Imagined contact is mental simulation of a positive interaction. Small but reliable, and useful as preparation. And vicarious or media contact is parasocial exposure via narrative media. Moderate effects, in well-designed studies.

Two Demonstrations

The Hypothesis at the Limits

Two field experiments illustrate the hypothesis at its limits. Sherif's Robbers Cave experiment ran in nineteen fifty-four. Published in nineteen sixty-one, and covered in section five point three. Two arbitrarily separated groups of summer-campers. Brought into intense conflict by competition for limited resources. Then reconciled through superordinate goals requiring cooperation. Aronson and colleagues translated that logic into schools, in nineteen seventy-eight. The jigsaw classroom, in newly desegregated United States classrooms. Each student in a multi-ethnic group held one segment of the material. One segment the whole group needed to master. That produces structural interdependence. With measurable gains in intergroup liking, and in academic performance. Notice the design principle both interventions share. Neither asks anyone to feel differently about anyone. Both change the task so cooperation is the only route to something already wanted.

The Warning

When Contact Backfires

Now the warning, and it is the most important part of this section. Contact is not uniformly beneficial. Contact that is competitive can entrench prejudice rather than reduce it. So can contact that is status-unequal, or institutionally unsupported. Dixon, Durrheim, and Tredoux documented this in two thousand five. And there is a subtler failure, which they call the sedative effect. In societies marked by sharp structural inequality, watch what happens. Well-meaning contact interventions produce pleasant cross-group interaction. And that pleasant interaction reduces something. It reduces disadvantaged group members' perception of injustice. And their willingness to mobilize for structural change. So the individual attitudes improve, and the measure looks good. While pressure for structural reform falls. That is the most dangerous kind of success. One that scores well on its own variable.

Consolidate

Necessary, and Insufficient

So state the advanced position precisely. Contact is necessary but insufficient. Individual-level prejudice reduction has to be paired with structural reform. Otherwise contact substitutes for the pursuit of equality, instead of supporting it. Five terms to carry forward. The contact hypothesis itself, always with its conditions attached. Allport's four conditions, in order. Extended contact, which reaches people with no contact of their own. Imagined contact, which is preparation and not substitute. And superordinate goals, which change the task rather than the feelings. One question to ask of any contact program you meet. What structural change is it running alongside, and what is it running instead of?

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Bridging the Divide: The Contact Hypothesis and Its Conditions for Success

What are Allport's four conditions for intergroup contact?
Gordon Allport's 1954 contact hypothesis says contact reduces prejudice best under four conditions: equal status within the situation, common goals, intergroup cooperation, and support from authorities, law, or custom. Equal status refers to standing within the contact setting, not in wider society. Allport recognized that poorly structured contact can entrench bias. Later evidence shows these conditions strengthen contact effects but are not strictly required for contact to help.
Does intergroup contact really reduce prejudice?
Yes, on average, though the effect is modest. Pettigrew and Tropp's 2006 meta-analysis of 515 studies, with more than 250,000 participants in 38 nations, found a mean effect of about r = -0.21. Contact helped even when Allport's conditions were not all met, though more when they were, and effects generalized from individuals to the outgroup as a whole. Their 2008 follow-up found reduced anxiety and increased empathy mattered more than increased knowledge.
What is the extended contact hypothesis?
The extended contact hypothesis states that simply knowing an ingroup member has a close friend in an outgroup can reduce prejudice, even without personal contact. Wright, Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe, and Ropp proposed it in 1997, and it has been supported in many studies. It matters because it reaches people who have no outgroup contact of their own, which is common in segregated settings. A related idea, imagined contact (Crisp and Turner, 2009), uses mental simulation of a positive interaction.
Can intergroup contact backfire?
Yes. Contact that is competitive, status-unequal, or unsupported by institutions can entrench prejudice rather than reduce it. Dixon, Durrheim, and Tredoux (2005) and later research also point to a subtler risk in highly unequal societies: pleasant cross-group contact can reduce disadvantaged group members' perception of injustice and their willingness to push for structural change. Attitudes may improve while pressure for reform falls, so contact works best alongside structural change rather than as a substitute.

About the Advanced Social Psychology course

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Advanced Social Psychology (Psychology 310) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
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