Even optimally structured contact changes some people not at all

Evidence

Cook (1984) found large individual differences in the effects of even optimal contact; 40% of his experimental subjects, compared with 12% of controls, evinced sweeping attitude changes. Yet other experimental subjects averaged little change. — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Intergroup Contact Theory, 93

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Undercuts the tidy reading of Allport’s conditions as a sufficient recipe: identical treatment yields sweeping change in 40% and near-nothing in others, which forces a rethink of contact as a probabilistic, person-contingent process rather than a lever.
• QUESTION: What predicts which subjects shift and which don’t under identical conditions? That moderator seems more valuable than the average effect.
• XREF: connects to: Physical contact humanizes opponents and enables depolarization — Didier Caluwaerts et al., Deliberation and Polarization: A…, 123