Intergroup attitude structures vary with the relationship’s contact patterns

Evidence

What accounts for these various forms of intergroup attitudes? A comparative analysis of race, class, and gender relations in the US found that the specific configuration of intergroup attitudes varies according to the structure of the relationship ( Jackman, 1994). For example, in race relations, marked by pervasive spatial distance mechanisms and limited opportunities for personal intergroup contact, the groups manifest a deep ideological rift, substantial own-group preference, and assertions of negative but probabilistically attributed stereotypes about Blacks by a substantial proportion of Whites. In gender relations, marked by pervasive social distance mechanisms and dense personal contacts across group lines, there is barely any ideological rift or own-group preference between groups, and women are categorically stereotyped by both groups with positive, communal traits. None of the intergroup relations (race, gender, or class) corresponds to the expectations of Allport’s prejudice model, i.e., free-ranging, hostile feelings or unmitigated, derogatory stereotypes. And yet all three intergroup relations have marked inequalities between groups in economic outcomes, status, and power, and pronounced tendencies among dominant group members to maintain these inequalities. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 662

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The structural unpacking — dense contact yields positive stereotypes while maintaining inequality — resists a one-sentence summary and reframes what prejudice even is.
• XREF: Connects to Milgrom’s institutions-emerge-where-information-is-costly theme — both argue structure of interaction, not individual hostility, drives group behavior. — connects to: Intergroup contact most strongly and reliably predicts willingness to mix with the outgroup — Miles Hewstone and Ed Cairns and Alberto Voci and Juergen Hamberger and Ulrike Niens, Intergroup Contact, Forgiveness, and…, 43; the MOC “The Wound of the Label: When Knowing Someone Becomes a Way of Erasing Them”