Intergroup contact reduces prejudice more strongly than prejudice drives avoidance of contact

Evidence

A potential participant selection bias could limit the interpretation of many studies of intergroup contact (Pettigrew, 1998). Instead of optimal contact reducing prejudice, the opposite causal sequence could be at work. Prejudiced people may avoid, and tolerant people may seek, contact with outgroups. … Statistical methods borrowed from econometrics allow researchers to compare roughly the reciprocal paths (contact lowers prejudice vs. prejudice decreases contact) with cross-sectional data. As shown directly in other research (e.g., Herek & Capitanio, 1996), these methods reveal that prejudiced people do indeed avoid intergroup contact. But the path from contact to reduced prejudice is generally much stronger (Butler & Wilson, 1978; Pettigrew, 1997; Powers & Ellison, 1995; Van Dick et al., 2004). Longitudinal studies also have revealed that optimal contact reduces prejudice over time (e.g., Eller & Abrams, 2003, 2004; Levin, van Laar, & Sidanius, 2003), even when researchers have eliminated the possibility of participant selection (e.g., Sherif, 1966). Thus, various methods suggest that, although both sequences operate, the more important effect is that of intergroup contact reducing prejudice. — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 37

Though in most empirical contexts, psychologists would consider this effect size to be “small” to “medium” in magnitude (Cohen, 1988), we should emphasize several points. First, given the large number of samples, the effect is highly significant (p .0001). Second, 94% of the samples show an inverse relationship between contact and prejudice. A scatter plot of the effect sizes by sample size reveals that the effects center around an average r of approximately .21, which corresponds closely to the overall mean effect size (see Figure 1). … As with most meta-analyses, the ultimate thrust of our analysis is not so much the gross effect sizes but more so the moderating variables that suggest the conditions under which intergroup contact reduces prejudice. — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 94

The causal sequence problem: Examining choice to engage in contact. The negative link between contact and prejudice may largely reflect the avoidance of contact by prejudiced people. If this is so, the effect sizes for those studies that provided participants with choice as to whether to engage in the intergroup contact — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 97

In addition, a less direct test of Allport’s conditions involves tests for intergroup friendship. Only 4 of the 134 samples that experienced optimal structured contact used friends as the measure of contact. Yet, paralleling the findings for optimally structured contact, the 154 tests that used intergroup friendship as the measure of contact (mean r .246) showed a significantly stronger effect than did the remaining 1,211 tests (mean r .212), QB(1) 4.42, p .05. — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 140

The findings also reveal that intergroup contact may be useful for reducing prejudice in a variety of intergroup situations and contexts. The patterns of contact–prejudice effects observed for racial and ethnic samples closely resemble those observed for the remaining samples in our analysis. Moreover, although we observe variability in the magnitude of contact–prejudice effects across different intergroup contexts, the relationships between contact and prejudice remain significant across samples involving different target groups, age groups, geographical areas, and contact settings. These results support the recent extension of intergroup contact theory to a variety of intergroup contexts, beyond its original focus on racial and ethnic groups. — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 218

Voci and Hewstone (2003) have shown that anxiety mediates the relationship between contact and prejudice when group salience is high but that such mediation is less pronounced when group salience is low. — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 233

For our meta-analysis, we conducted a 5-year search from which we uncovered 515 studies (including 714 independent samples and 1,365 nonindependent tests) that examined relationships between intergroup contact and prejudice. These cases were gathered from the 1940s through the year 2000, and, together, they represent responses from 250,493 individuals in 38 nations. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1679

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. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2290

Dovidio, Gaertner, and Kawakami (2003) argue for a unified framework which explains how the contact conditions proposed by Allport might achieve their effect. In this proposal, the several explanatory variables (i.e., mediators) fall into five key categories: functional relations (such as cooperation), behavioral factors (such as cognitive dissonance), affective factors (such as empathy and anxiety), and two cognitive factors: (a) learning new information and social representations via decategorization or personalization and (b) recategorization. Dovidio et al.’s (2003) reformulation suggests that the four prerequisite conditions (discussed earlier in this chapter), friendship, and personal interaction, lead to the five mediating processes, which result in more positive outgroup attitudes and reduced stereotyping. In the final stage, these attitudes are generalized from the individual to the outgroup as a whole. Both cognitive and affective factors are important aspects of the process by which this generalization occurs. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1825

Work on the relationship between familiarity and liking suggests that uncertainty reduction is an important mechanism underlying these relationships (e.g., Lee, 2001). Complementing this view, emerging perspectives have pointed to the significance of reducing intergroup anxiety to achieve reductions in prejudice from contact (Dijker, 1987; Islam & Hewstone, 1993; Stephan & Stephan, 1985; Stephan et al., 2002). Intergroup anxiety refers to feelings of threat and uncertainty that people experience in intergroup contexts. These feelings grow out of concerns about how they should act, how they might be perceived, and whether they will be accepted (Stephan & Stephan, 1985; see also Berger & Calabrese, 1975; Blascovich, Mendes, Hunter, & Lickel, 2000; Gudykunst, 1985; Mendes, Blascovich, Lickel, & Hunter, 2002). — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 229

Intergroup contact that arouses identity or realistic threat increases bias, whereas appropriately structured, cooperative contact can reduce prejudice, at least in part by reducing intergroup anxiety and threat (Kenworthy, Turner, Hewstone, & Voci). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 121

Finally, we know that contact is associated with reduced prejudice via reduced intergroup anxiety and group-based threat perceptions (e.g., Islam & Hewstone, 1993; Tausch et al., 2007), and via increased empathy, perspective taking, and positive emotions (see e.g., Mackie & Smith, 2002). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 556

Most studies report positive contact effects, even in situations lacking key conditions. Although it concentrates on school and housing situations (Ford 1986), the contact literature ranges from Chinese students in the United States (Chang 1973) and interracial workers in South Africa (Bornman & Mynhardt 1991) to German and Turkish school children (Wagner et al 1989) and Australians (McKay & Pitman 1993) and Americans (Riordan 1987) getting to know Southeast Asian immigrants. It involves attitudes toward a wide range of targets beyond ethnic groups—the elderly (Caspi 1984, Drew 1988), homosexuals (Eskilson 1995, Herek & Capitanio 1996), the mentally ill (Desforges et al 1991), disabled persons (Anderson 1995), victims of AIDS (Werth & Lord 1992), and even computer programmers (McGinnis 1990). … In addition, diverse research methods yield supporting results—field (Meer & Freedman 1966, Ohm 1988), archival (Fine 1979), survey (Jackman & Crane 1986; Pettigrew 1997a,b; Robinson 1980; Sigelman & Welch 1993), and laboratory (Cook 1978, 1984; Desforges et al 1991). — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Intergroup Contact Theory, 24

Categorization

• XREF: The reciprocal-causation logic parallels the classic selection-bias critique that applies broadly to intervention research beyond just intergroup contact. — 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; Low interethnic contact sustains rejection of collective guilt; Contact’s prejudice-reducing effect is causal, not a selection or publication artifact. — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 216 (+1 more)
• SHARE: A specific colleague studying intergroup relations would want the 94%-of-samples result and average r of .21.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does the choice-avoidance confound get resolved in this analysis, and does it hold up in later replications?
• DEFINE: A useful taxonomy: functional, behavioral, affective, and two cognitive mediators of contact effects.
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the contact-theory reassessment thread implied by the reading purpose, corroborating the anxiety-reduction mediator.
• SEED: Angle: ‘contact works even without Allport’s conditions’ as an essay on how social science’s four optimal conditions became dogma.
• corroborated: 20 independent passages support this claim — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 37; Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 94; Thomas F. Pettigrew, Linda R. Tropp, A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup…, 97 (+10 more)