Viewing members of other social groups less favorably than one’s own is called what?

7.2 Mechanisms by Which Contact Reduces Intergroup Bias: The Role of Category Salience

The contact hypothesis does not specify the processes that are responsible for the positive effects or how the positive effects of contact generalize beyond the immediate situation to other situations, from the specific out-group member encountered to the out-group as a whole, or to other out-groups not involved in the contact. Recent work suggests that four interrelated processes operate through contact and mediate attitude change: learning about the out-group, changing behavior, generating affective ties, and in-group reappraisal.

Although cognitive research has uncovered a host of mechanisms that limit learning material that counters our attitudes and stereotypes, the research literature suggests that positive effects are more common than the contact hypothesis or cognitive analyses predict. The basic reason is that learning about the out-group is only one of several processes involved. For example, optimal and continuous intergroup contact has the potential to produce attitude change by revising attitudes in accordance with behavior and by reducing the anxiety often experienced in intergroup encounters. Positive emotions aroused by intergroup friendship may be pivotal in reducing intergroup prejudice. It has been shown that having an out-group friend may even generalize to other out-groups besides that of the particular friend. In addition, optimal intergroup contact reduces prejudice by providing insight about the in-group as well as the out-group, leading to a less provincial view of out-groups in general.

As for the generalization of contact across situations, research has generally shown that positive effects on intergroup attitudes might need repeated optimal situations. Research supporting the salient categorization model proposed by Hewstone and Brown during the 1980s shows that stereotype change generalizes best to the intergroup level when the individuals involved are typical out-group members. This approach argues that, to protect against loss of distinctiveness for groups involved in contact, two factors are important. First, the salience of group boundaries should be maintained during contact (i.e., group memberships are made salient or the partner is typical [rather than atypical] of the out-group as a whole) to promote generalization across members of the target group. Second, groups should recognize and value mutual superiorities and inferiorities.

Thus, there seems to be some advantage in maintaining the original group boundaries in the interaction while otherwise optimizing contact conditions. Positive contact is more likely to be associated with favorable out-group attitudes when contact takes place with a typical out-group member. However, this poses a problem. Typical members of real groups are different in many ways, but people tend to seek out people with similar interests and status. Maintaining category distinctions during contact involves the risks of reinforcing perceptions of group differences and increasing intergroup anxiety, thereby increasing bias.

One way of maintaining category salience while still diminishing anxiety associated with intergroup contact is offered by a recent development of the contact hypothesis called the extended contact effect. This model proposes that the awareness that one’s fellow in-group members have close friendships with out-group members can help to reduce prejudice toward the out-group. A likely reason for this is that the in-group “exemplars” provide normative information regarding how one should behave and also may contribute to the redefinition of the intergroup relationship as less negative. Such an “extended contact effect” does not require personal intergroup friendship for the perceiver. Correlational and experimental evidence of this idea is emerging. Underlying this model is the idea that both in-group and out-group role models should be seen as typical or representative of their groups and not as exceptions to the rule.

3.2.2.3 Intergroup Contact

Arguably, the intergroup contact hypothesis formalized by Allport (1954) has been the single most influential scientific framework concerned with prejudice reduction (see Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006, 2008). Pettigrew and Tropp's (2006) recent meta-analysis of 515 studies confirmed that intergroup contact typically reduces intergroup prejudice (mean effect size, r = − 0.21) and that the optimal contact conditions proposed by Allport (equal status, intergroup cooperation, the pursuit of common goals, and the presence of institutional support) are facilitating rather than necessary requirements for the effects.

Recently, Dhont, Roets, and Van Hiel (2011) investigated whether intergroup contact is also effective for high NFC individuals. Of interest, Allport (1954) himself argued against this being the case, assuming that people with a “prejudiced personality” (i.e., individuals high in NFC) are simply too rigid to change. However, in their studies, Dhont et al. (2011) found that not only was intergroup contact effective for high NFC individuals, but people high in dispositional NFC were actually more susceptible to the positive effects of intergroup contact on prejudice reduction than were low NFC scorers. This finding emerged not only in each of their cross-sectional studies but also in a field experiment (Study 3), lending particular credence to these findings. The latter, real-life intervention study showed that Belgian high school students, especially those high in NFC, who went on a 1-week, intense-contact school trip to Morocco, subsequently exhibited substantially less negative out-group attitudes than a control group that was not involved in the program (see Figure 7).

Finally, Dhont et al. (2011) proposed that the reduction of intergroup anxiety is an important mediator through which the effect of intergroup contact on various forms of prejudice in high NFC individuals operates. Indeed, intergroup contact has been shown to diminish intergroup anxiety, which consequently reduces prejudice (e.g., Brown & Hewstone, 2005; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008). Based on the findings of Studies 4 and 5, the authors concluded that people high in NFC—who feel most averse and fearful toward the unfamiliar, the ambiguous, and the unpredictable—benefit the most from the anxiety-reducing effects of positive intergroup contact.

Further insight into this process may accrue from research described earlier on genetic polymorphisms linking a short-allele (S-allele) of the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) to higher NFC scores (Cheon et al., 2015). As it turns out, the same S-allele has also been associated with a higher susceptibility to particular environmental influences because of heightened emotional reactivity (Belsky & Pluess, 2009; Uher et al., 2011). Thus, positive environmental cues of intergroup contact may bring greater intergroup contact benefits to high NFC participants because of their genetic susceptibility to such influences. Similarly, negative intergroup contact may be expected to have stronger negative effects on intergroup attitudes of high (vs. low) NFC individuals, as was already shown for individuals scoring high on RWA (Dhont & Van Hiel, 2009), which, through NFC, is also linked to the 5-HTTLPR short-allele genotype (Cheon et al., 2015; see also Cheon et al., 2014).

In addition to reduced anxiety by increased familiarity with the out-group, the high salience of the positive information obtained by positive contact may also contribute to the more prominent effects of intergroup contact for high NFC individuals. In particular, positive information may replace negative information from earlier socialization as the most salient and easily accessible information, which then will be used (i.e., seized upon) by high NFC individuals when making judgments about the out-group. Indeed, the latter mechanism could explain why, in most of the studies by Dhont et al. (2011), the combination of high NFC and high contact actually yielded the lowest levels of prejudice.

5.2 The Focus on Categories

It is not surprising that this approach has been more elaborated than the previous one by psychologists because it goes back to the definition of prejudice, that is, reaction against individuals because of the category they belong to.

Allport’s (1954) ‘contact hypothesis’ proposed that intergroup contact is a powerful means for improving intergroup attitudes. Subsequent theory and research has developed this hypothesis into a full-blown theory that makes precise predictions about the effects of different types of contact on mainly attitudinal outcomes, and how and when those effects will occur. This chapter reviews some of the most important measures commonly used in research on intergroup contact; those specifically pertaining to intergroup contact (both direct and extended), mediating (intergroup anxiety) and moderating (membership salience) mechanisms, and outcomes (outgroup attitudes). Our aim is that the information assembled here can serve both (a) as a ‘toolkit’ for the interested novice researcher and (b) as a useful resource to the experienced intergroup contact practitioner regarding the psychometric properties of these commonly used measures. Research on intergroup contact is of great practical and policy importance, hence it behoves us as researchers to take care to use the best possible tools for the job.

3.1.1 Explicit attitudes

In our initial test of the imagined contact hypothesis, we conducted a series of studies in which participants were asked to imagine encountering an outgroup member before reporting their attitude toward the outgroup in general (Turner, Crisp, et al., 2007; see Table 3.1). In Experiment 1, young participants were asked to take a minute either to imagine meeting an older adult for the first time or to imagine an outdoor scene. After listing the things they had imagined, they were told that the researchers would be running a second study in a care home in which young people would have the choice of interacting with either an older adult or another young person. They were then asked to indicate their preference for each type of interaction. It emerged that whereas participants in the control condition were more likely to prefer to interact with a young person than with an older person, those who had first imagined contact were equally happy to interact with a young person or an older person; in other words, intergroup bias was significantly reduced by imagined contact. In Experiment 2, we replicated this effect, but using a control condition in which participants simply thought about older adults. Finally, in Experiment 3, we examined the effect of imagined contact on attitudes toward a different group, gay men. Male undergraduate students who had identified themselves as being straight were asked to spend 5 min either imagining talking to a gay man on a train, while learning some interesting and unexpected things about him, or, in a control condition, to imagining a hiking trip. Participants were then asked to evaluate gay men in general (e.g., did they feel positive or negative, warm or hostile, and suspicious or trusting toward them?), and to indicate how much variability there is among gay men (e.g., “When you think about gay men, do you perceive them as similar to one another?” “Among gay men there are different types of people”; seven-point semantic differential scale). As expected, straight men who imagined a positive encounter with a gay man subsequently evaluated gay men more positively, and perceived there to be greater variability among gay men, compared to a control group.

Table 3.1. Imagined contact effects on attitudes, evaluations, and perceived group variability (Turner, Crisp, et al., 2007).

Note: Standard deviations are shown in parentheses.

Positive intergroup bias score denotes preference for ingroup over outgroup, whereas a negative intergroup bias score reflects preference for outgroup over ingroup.

All differences significant at p < 0.05.

In subsequent studies, we and others have shown that imagined contact can improve explicit attitudinal evaluations of a range of outgroups, including Mexicans’ attitudes toward Mestizos in Mexico (Stathi & Crisp, 2008), non-Muslims attitudes toward Muslims (Husnu & Crisp, 2010a, Experiment 2; Turner & Crisp, 2010b, Experiment 1; Turner & West, 2012, Experiment 2), illegal immigrants (Harwood, Paolini, Joyce, Rubin, & Arroyo, 2010) and British teenagers’ attitudes toward asylum seekers (Turner, West, et al., in press). Moreover, imagined contact can even generate more positive affective and cognitive attitudes toward highly stigmatized outgroups that are perceived as physically threatening, such as people with schizophrenia (West et al., 2011).

Notably, Stathi and Crisp (2008) tested whether imagined contact leads not only to improved evaluations of outgroups but also via greater projection of positive traits from the self to the outgroup. Projection is an important process because it involves the attribution of traits to others and can constitute a fundamental “cognitive basis for ingroup favoritism” (Robbins & Krueger, 2005, p. 42). This is because projection of positive self-traits to similar others (i.e., the ingroup) is generally stronger for ingroups than for outgroups (Clement & Krueger, 2002). Establishing that imagined contact improves not only outgroup attitudes but also contributory processes and related constructs is important for developing an inclusive account of impacts on outcomes relevant to reducing prejudice. To this end, we next turn to studies that have shown imagined contact to improve attitudes and evaluations not only on the explicit level but also at the implicit level.

Social Psychology of Peace-making

Around the middle of the twentieth century, Gordon Allport’s contact hypothesis proposed that groups could reduce their biases toward each other through contact as long as certain conditions were met. Subsequent research has generally supported the view that contact works when the groups (1) work together cooperatively, (2) have frequent and prolonged contact, (3) enjoy equal status, and (4) receive institutional and social support. Hence, contact alone will not reduce prejudice between groups. To the contrary, efforts to integrate schools in the United States, for example, often led to higher levels of prejudice between Blacks and Whites, largely because not all of the conditions for successful contact were met.

Morton Deutsch has shown that conflict can be constructive if it is managed in a constructive way that prevents violent episodes. Conflict can be an opportunity for building constructive relationships at interpersonal and intergroup levels. In interpersonal relationships, for example, conflict can stimulate partners to express feelings, talk problems through, and solve issues in a mutually satisfying way that strengthens the long-term relationship. Between groups, conflict can enhance in-group cohesion, a common purpose, and yield mutually beneficial agreements.

Two broad means of managing conflict in a constructive manner are negotiation and mediation. When individuals or groups engage in principled negotiation, as contrasted with hard bargaining, conflict is treated as an opportunity for joint problem-solving and resolution that meets the concerns and interests of all parties. The principled approach focuses not on stated positions but on interests that underlie positions. The approach also encourages (1) intergroup empathy in an effort to understand what each other really wants; (2)separating the people from the problem; (3)avoiding criticism of each other but being tough on the problem; (4) inventing options that yield mutual gains; and (5) using objective criteria to judge whether proposed agreements satisfy everyone’s interests. Principled negotiation tends to yield creative options, positional flexibility, and improved relationships though mutual learning and problem-solving.

Mediation consists of a third-party facilitation that helps conflicted individuals or parties negotiate an agreement. Mediators do not have to be neutral in the conflict, but they must be trusted by the various parties. Mediation is used widely at local levels in child custody disputes, school-based conflicts among students, and labor-management disputes, among others.

Mediation is used frequently in the international arena. Amidst hostility and distrust between warring parties that are reluctant to negotiate, a mediator can use leverage, rewards, and punishments (i.e., carrots-and-sticks approach) that can increase the parties’ motivation to engage in dialog and move toward a negotiated settlement. When, for example, US president Jimmy Carter brokered a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel at Camp David in 1979, he used promises of military and economic aid to encourage both parties to engage in dialog. When the talks stalled, he threatened them with withdrawal of US support. Carter also allowed the wary adversaries to save face by suggesting options (e.g., withdrawing Israeli settlements from the Sinai) that they themselves could not have raised out of fear of appearing weak to their counterpart and their respective right-wing constituencies.

Effective mediators reframe ideas for conflicted parties, create perceptions of common ground, and build hope that a mutually satisfactory agreement is possible. At its best, mediation not only facilitates agreements but transforms relationships so that the parties can adopt what Morton Deutsch refers to as a cooperative orientation that entails a positive interest in the well-being of the other as well as one’s self.

In interactive problem-solving workshops, Herbert Kelman has employed social psychological principles to explore the relationship between individual and social changes. Changes at each of these levels are conceptualized as linked to each other by continuous, circular processes so that change in an individual can produce social change and conversely, social change can produce individual change. In Kelman’s workshops, representatives of conflicted groups interact in a small group, neutral setting designed to induce change in the individual participants, as a catalyst for macrolevel changes in the policies and cultures of the parties in conflict.

In the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, a typical workshop brings together three to six respected members of the Israeli and Palestinian communities for two-and-a-half days of intensive dialog. To encourage truth-seeking and flexible exploration of ideas, the workshops convene in a private academic setting and no records are kept. Agreements are nonbinding because participants are not representatives of their governments; they are however, respected political influentials and it is expected that their work will induce changes in wider political communities. Kelman has emphasized that the workshops are not substitutes for official negotiations but are useful in preparing the way for official negotiations, for managing problems that arise during peace negotiations, and for enabling effective implementation of official agreements.

2.2 Laboratory Experiments: Defining the Limits of the Contact Effect

The elements of the Robbers Cave experiment also provided a prototype for subsequent laboratory experiments on the contact hypothesis and its moderating conditions. The basic laboratory paradigm is essentially a scaled-down version of the summer camp model. Participants in a laboratory session are first divided arbitrarily into two separate groups or social categories and given an opportunity to form distinct ingroup identities. The presence of ingroup bias and outgroup derogation is assessed at the end of this stage, and then members of the two groups are brought into contact under conditions that are experimentally manipulated to test features of the contact hypothesis and its underlying assumptions.

A brief review of these laboratory experiments identifies a number of factors that either inhibit or facilitate the effectiveness of contact to reduce ingroup–outgroup biases and promote positive attitudes toward outgroup members. Among the moderating variables confirmed by experimental studies are the frequency and duration of intergroup interaction, the presence of intergroup anxiety, the structure of cooperative tasks, the outcome of cooperation, and status equalization. In general, results of laboratory experiments confirm the premises of the contact hypothesis but also indicate the complexity—and potential fragility—of effects of intergroup contact even under highly controlled conditions.

In what is probably the most comprehensive laboratory test of inter-racial contact effects, Stuart Cook (see Miller and Brewer 1984) conducted a series of experiments in which highly prejudiced white subjects worked with a black confederate in an ideal contact situation (equal status, cooperative interdependence, with high acquaintance potential and egalitarian social norms) over an extended period of time. Perceptions of the black co-worker were measured at the completion of the contact experience, and general racial attitudes were assessed before, immediately after, and up to three years following the experimental sessions. Across all variations of this experiment, white participants displayed predominantly positive behaviors toward their black co-worker and expressed highly favorable evaluations in the postexperimental questionnaires. Whether liking for this individual member of the outgroup resulted in changed attitudes toward blacks and race-related issues, however, varied across the experiments and for different attitude measures.

One major reason why generalization fails is that the newly positively valued outgroup member is regarded as an exception and not typical or representative of the outgroup in general. In Cook's studies, significant differences in postcontact attitude change among those who participated in the contact experience compared to control subjects were obtained only in an initial experiment in which what Cook referred to as a ‘cognitive booster’ was introduced during the course of the experiment. This added element was a guided conversation (led by a research confederate) in which the negative effects of discriminatory policies and practices were directly connected to the now-liked black co-worker. This booster served to make salient the co-worker's category membership and to establish a link between feelings toward this individual and members of the group as a whole. This explicit linkage appears to be a necessary mechanism for the effects of contact experiences to be generalized.

4 Psychological Strategies for Reducing Prejudice and Discrimination

By being aware of the processes that lead to prejudice and discrimination, we can develop strategies for promoting more positive attitudes and behavior toward members of other groups. The contact hypothesis represents one of the most prominent approaches to prejudice reduction. In general, people are afraid of the unknown, which includes groups of people with whom they are fairly unfamiliar. However, the more knowledge about, understanding for, and experience with other groups that people obtain, the less negative and hostile people are likely to be. The underlying reasoning of the contact hypothesis is that if people are exposed to members of other groups in a variety of ways, they will become more positive toward members of those groups and less likely to display prejudicial behavior. Nevertheless, it is not sufficient just to expose people to a minimal amount of information about another group or to live next door to someone who is of a different background. Several specific conditions must be met for the contact strategy to improve attitudes and behavior toward members of other groups.

Actual cooperation among members of the different groups is essential. In other words, people from the distinct groups should not be competing against each other for jobs, status, living space, money, and so forth. Cooperation between groups can be achieved by developing a common goal that can be achieved only if members of the different groups work together. Such cooperation will also help to develop a common identity that further decreases negative intergroup attitudes and discrimination. Equal status between the groups represents another important factor that underlies the contact strategy. In other words, it is critical that members of one group do not see themselves as superior to the members of the other group. Cooperative interdependence has been found to be helpful in superseding the presence of unequal status between two groups. In cooperative interdependence, each individual, regardless of group membership, is equally important for the task accomplishment.

Frequency, duration, and meaningfulness of interactions among the members of the different groups represent a set of factors that contribute to the effectiveness of the contact strategy. Specifically, the interaction among the members of the distinct groups should be frequent, long, and significant rather than occasional, short, and irrelevant. As a result, people will gain meaningful personal information about members of the other group. Social and institutional support is the final essential condition of the contact hypothesis. Contact between groups in the manner outlined here should be strongly supported by various levels of society such as the government, educational organizations, and employers. Overall, the contact approach provides a general framework consisting of several important factors that have been shown to contribute to decreasing prejudice and discrimination among members of different groups.

The second major approach to reducing prejudice and discrimination consists of categorization strategies. Two main strategies for restructuring people’s mental representations of members of other groups have been suggested. Recategorization proposes the development of one common identity (i.e., us) rather than distinct in-group–out-group identities (i.e., us vs them). The existence of a shared identity will decrease the salience of the differences that often exist between two groups and will highlight the commonalities that the members of the two groups share. As a result, this focus on the shared aspects of a common identity will decrease the negative attitudes and discrimination between the two groups.

Decategorization offers a different approach to restructuring the perception of “us versus them.” Rather than recategorizing separate identities by developing one shared identity, decategorizing signifies the elimination of group categorization. In other words, the removal of group-based typing will lead to the individualization of the members of the other group. As a result, they will be perceived as unique persons without the negative stereotypes that are traditionally associated with that specific group. This perception of people as unique individuals will further decrease the prejudice and discrimination that were brought about by intergroup differentiation.

It is also important to address the role of individual differences in the effectiveness of strategies for the reduction of prejudice and discrimination. For example, to decrease prejudice and discrimination, it is important to develop strategies that will counter right-wing authoritarian tendencies. One strategy that has received support is the personal value confrontation technique. With this technique, the discrepancy between people’s ratings of the importance of freedom versus equality and their simultaneous support for discriminatory treatment of a minority group is highlighted. When the attention of high right-wing authoritarians is drawn to this incongruity, they tend to show improved attitudes toward the minority group.

In sum, based on knowledge of the processes that underlie prejudice and discrimination, strategies to counteract these influences can be suggested.

7 Stereotype Change

With the knowledge that stereotypes are often based on incomplete overgeneralizations, it seems that one obvious way to change people’s stereotypes is to put them into contact with the very people they are stereotyping. Specifically, by interacting with out-group members people would have ample opportunity to notice behavior that was inconsistent with the group stereotype, thereby resulting in stereotype change. This premise is exactly what Allport’s 1954 contact hypothesis is based on. Although the idea is simple, there are certain factors that influence whether or not contact leads to stereotype change. For example, if a certain white individual holds negative stereotypes about Latinos, then, according to the contact hypothesis, those stereotypes should be reduced by having the individual interact with Latinos in a supportive, friendly environment. In addition, stereotype change is facilitated when social institutions support the intergroup contact and when the two groups are believed to share equal status in some domain. Clearly, not every interaction with members of the stereotyped group will lead to change. In fact, situations in which the contact involves competition, members of one or both groups are frustrated, and members of the two groups hold different morals or values will not be conducive for reducing stereotypes.

In the multicultural society in which we live, people of different races seem to be interacting with increasing frequency, yet stereotypes persist. One possible explanation for this persistence is that people rationalize inconsistent behaviors by stereotyped group members. For example, if someone meets a successful Latino businessman, then this might go against his or her stereotypic expectation that Latinos are lazy and unintelligent. However, rather than changing their stereotypes, people may instead group people that do not “fit” the stereotype into their own separate category or subtype. By placing those who display stereotype-inconsistent behavior into subtypes, people maintain the status quo and resist changing their stereotypes of the group as a whole.

Although the picture painted previously seems grim, researchers have developed other promising cognitive interventions that have been shown to decrease the use of stereotypes in certain situations. For example, encouraging people to think carefully about others before passing judgment forces them to focus on individual-level attributes rather than category-level information. This approach encourages people to look beyond group memberships and instead to see people as unique individuals. Moreover, if the motivation and cognitive resources are available, people are able to control their use of stereotypes in many situations.

Jigsaw Classroom

One of the most successful methods for reducing racial bias is the jigsaw classroom technique. The jigsaw classroom is a cooperative learning strategy akin to a jigsaw puzzle in that each student plays a critical part for the completion and comprehension of the final product. If each student's part is essential, then by extension each student is essential. Note that just as in the contact hypothesis, the cooperative behaviors need to lead to a successful final outcome, otherwise finger-pointing and scapegoating may occur.

Let us use an example to illustrate the basic idea of the jigsaw puzzle method. Say a jigsaw group is assigned to work on a project about conservation and the environment. Aly is responsible for researching the different ways to recycle, Chris is responsible for researching water conversation, Emily is responsible for researching ways to limit air pollution, Brad is responsible for researching alternative energy, and Meghan is responsible for researching the impact of global warming. The situation is specifically structured so that the only access any student has to the other pieces of the project is by listening closely to each student's report. Thus, if Aly does not like Meghan, or if she thinks Chris is a nerd and mocks him, she will not do well on the assignments. Hence, by relying on the students in the jigsaw group, all students begin to view the other group members as valuable, important, and critical to the group's success, which then translates into general positive perception of the students and their respective social group.