Personalized friendships with outgroup members may fail to change attitudes toward the whole group.

Evidence

Indeed, a real concern is that individuals may discount positive experiences with outgroup members as an exception to the rule. Consequently, Hewstone and Brown (1986) argued that, under decategorized contact, attitudes towards the outgroup as a whole would remain unchanged, due to the very conditions intended to produce the attitude change. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1809

Categorization

• XREF: Directly engages the vault’s contact-theory claims — the generalization problem that Allport’s hypothesis must confront. This is a core update/caveat to the canonical contact hypothesis.