Even apartheid-era unequal-status contact reduced White prejudice

Evidence

These mere exposure findings also help to explain why Allport’s optimal conditions prove not to be essential for the positive effects of contact to emerge. Although 94% of the 713 samples in our analysis showed an inverse relationship between intergroup contact and prejudice, only 19% of the samples involved contact situations structured in line with Allport’s conditions. Consider two relevant examples: Van Dyk (1990) found that rural Afrikaans-speaking White housewives who had close contact with their African domestic workers had more favorable attitudes toward Africans in general (r .09). Conducted during the tense final days of South Africa’s apartheid policy, this contact situation sharply violates Allport’s key conditions. — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 226

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Institutional support matters most for contact but backfires under competition or unequal status. — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 223; Even under apartheid and segregation, intergroup contact reduced prejudice. — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 227

Related

• Even under apartheid and segregation, intergroup contact reduced prejudice. (similarity 0.94)
• Institutional support matters most for contact but backfires under competition or unequal status. (similarity 0.87)
• Frequent interracial contact alone did nothing to soften apartheid’s hierarchy. (similarity 0.86)
• Contact reduces prejudice only under equal-status, intimate, stereotype-defying conditions (similarity 0.85)
• Contact reduces hostility even amid conflict and heavy segregation, mainly affectively. (similarity 0.84)
• Contact alone fails to reduce prejudice outside controlled conditions. (similarity 0.83)
• Intergroup contact reduces prejudice across outgroups, and Allport’s conditions are helpful but not essential. (similarity 0.83)
• Allport’s contact conditions boost prejudice reduction more for nonracial than racial intergroup contexts (similarity 0.82)
• Intergroup contact reduces prejudice even beyond the groups involved. (similarity 0.82)
• Allport’s optimal contact conditions facilitate but are not necessary for prejudice reduction (similarity 0.82)
• Allport held that equal-status contact alone cannot reduce prejudice (similarity 0.82)
• Intergroup contact is an established general mechanism for reducing prejudice across group types. (similarity 0.82)
• Negative factors limiting contact’s prejudice reduction remain the least understood (similarity 0.81)
• Theorists now seek what is necessary, not just helpful, for contact success (similarity 0.81)
• Most prejudice-reducing contact occurs outside Allport’s presumed optimal conditions. (similarity 0.80)