Contact effects on prejudice are strongest when the contact measure is friendship

Evidence

We find that the 149 tests in which friendship was used as the contact measure revealed markedly stronger effects (mean d = −0.55, mean r = −0.27) than the remaining tests using other indicators of contact (mean d = −0.37, mean r = −0.18), a statistically significant difference. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1695

We can obtain some encouragement in this regard from Pettigrew and Tropp’s meta-analysis of intergroup contact and prejudice (ch. 16 this volume), which revealed that contact is most effective in prejudice reduction when it has positive affective consequences (e.g., by building friendships). This pattern may indicate that prejudice is more effectively undermined by changing emotions than by changing stereotypes. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2290

Categorization

• CANDY: A concrete, quotable statistic: friendship-based contact halves prejudice roughly 50% more than other contact forms (d=-0.55 vs -0.37).
• XREF: Core evidence for the vault’s contact-theory claims: affirms the affective pathway (friendship) over cognitive stereotype change. — connects to: Outgroup friendship contact correlates with forgiveness, trust, and perspective-taking across both religious groups — Miles Hewstone and Ed Cairns and Alberto Voci and Juergen Hamberger and Ulrike Niens, Intergroup Contact, Forgiveness, and…, 83
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 1695; , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2290