Allport focused on immediate situational causes and doubted contact would generally reduce prejudice.

Evidence

Although he taught sociology as a young man in Turkey (Nicholson, 2003), Allport emphasized proximal, immediate causes and generally disregarded distal, societal causes. So he looked to features of the immediate situation as determinants of intergroup contact’s effects on prejudice. Additionally, both he and Williams (1947) before him doubted whether contact would generally reduce prejudice. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1705

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the meta-analytic finding that friendship contact and structured programs work best — an empirical update to Allport’s original skepticism.