Minimal group experiments offered a laboratory testbed for contact research.

Evidence

By 1980, it was apparent that contact research needed a more elaborated theory of what the underlying processes are and how they mediate the effects of intergroup contact under different conditions. At that time, it seemed to me that the implications of the minimal group paradigm experiments and the theory of social categorization and social identity that these experiments gave rise to in European social psychology could be brought to bear on contact research in the United States. First, the minimal intergroup experiments had demonstrated that intergroup processes could be created and studied in the laboratory, providing a potential testing ground for hypothesized effects of proposed interventions to reduce intergroup discrimination and hostility. Second, social categorization theory could provide a conceptual framework for understanding the processes by which intergroup contact might produce changes in intergroup attitudes and behavior. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2492

Categorization

• XREF: Crosses the American contact hypothesis tradition with the European minimal group paradigm / social identity theory of Tajfel and Turner.