Pre-contact theorizing viewed intergroup hostility as a natural outcome of contact

Evidence

Nineteenthcentury thinking, dominated by Social Darwinism, was quite pessimistic. William Graham Sumner (1906) held that intergroup contact almost inevitably led to conflict. This followed from his famous contention that hostility toward outgroups is a reciprocal function of an ingroup’s sense of superiority. Because Sumner also believed that most groups felt themselves to be superior, his theory viewed intergroup hostility and conflict to be natural and inevitable outcomes of contact. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1655