Prejudiced people avoid intergroup contact, making the contact-prejudice causal link two-way.

Evidence

Varied research supports the hypothesis—from field and archival studies to national surveys and laboratory experiments. However, cross-sectional studies suffer from a selection bias. Prejudiced people avoid intergroup contact, so the causal link between contact and prejudice is two-way. Yet those studies that have tested both paths find that the positive effects of cross-group friendship are larger than those of the bias. — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Intergroup Contact Theory, 108

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to debates about reverse causation and selection effects in social-science survey work, e.g. Allport’s original contact conditions.
• QUESTION: How do researchers disentangle the two paths in cross-sectional designs — do longitudinal/panel studies show the friendship path dominating over time?