Friendship potential is a necessary fifth condition for generalizing contact effects

Evidence

The power of cross-group friendship to reduce prejudice and generalize to other outgroups demands a fifth condition for the contact hypothesis: The contact situation must provide the participants with the opportunity to become friends. Such opportunity implies close interaction that would make selfdisclosure and other friendship-developing mechanisms possible. It also implies the potential for extensive and repeated contact in a variety of social contexts. — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Intergroup Contact Theory, 81

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces ‘friendship potential’ as a distinct, load-bearing condition alongside Allport’s original four.
• SHARE: Worth sending to a segregation policy researcher — reframes desegregation from mere proximity to structured opportunity for repeated, varied interaction.
• XREF: connects to: Physical contact humanizes opponents and enables depolarization — Didier Caluwaerts et al., Deliberation and Polarization: A…, 123