Four conditions for optimal intergroup contact:
1. Equal group status within the situation.
2. Common goals
3. Intergroup cooperation
4. Authority Support
Some Problems:
1. Selection BIAS limits cross sectional studies, since prejusticed people avoid intergroup contact. The positive effect of the cross-group friendship is larger. (Means that we are selecting people from the same Type - as Program managers).
2. Writers overburden the hypothesis with facilitating, but not essential, conditions.
3. The hypothesis fails to address process. The chapter proposes four processes: learning about the outgroup, changed behavior, affective ties, and ingroup reappraisal.
4. The hypothesis does not specify how the effects generalize to other situations, the outgroup or uninvolved outgroups.
Processes of Change:
1. Learning about the outgroup - New learning correct negative view about the outgroup. it happens only if:
a. the behavior is starkly inconsistence with the stereotype.
b. occur often and in many situations
c. the outgroup members seems to be typical.
2. Changing Behavior - We can resolve our dissonance between old prejudices and new behavior by revising our attitudes (Aronson & Patnoe 1997).
3. Generate Affective Ties - Continued contact generally reduces anxiety, though bad experiences can increase it. Positive emotions aroused by optimal contact also can mediate intergroup contact effects.
Three types of Generalization:
1. Generalization across situation - not really worked in US.
2. Generalization from the outgroup individual to the outgroup: Hewstone & Brown (1986) theorized that contact
effects generalize to the outgroup only when group membership is salient. When group saliency is low, the situation is interpersonal and no intergroup effects should result. Research that supports this salient categorization strategy shows stereotype change generalizes best to the intergroup level when the individuals involved are typical group members.
Typical members of real groups are different in many ways, but people with similar interests and status seek each other out—the similarity principle (Byrne 1971).
how to solve it?
a. The similarity is not always correct - under some conditions, optimal contact leads to positive changes that generalize even when atypical members are involved
b. Sequence of events - de-categorization, silence categories, re-categories.
3. Generalization between the immediate outgroup to ourgroups - Having an ingroup friend related to greater acceptance of minorities of many types (Pettigrew 1997a,b).
Reformulation of Intergroup contact theory:
There are four processes -
1. Long term relationship for friendship to nature and give time for all the sequence to take place.
2. The situation must provide the participate with the opportunity to become friends.
Intergroup Contact Theory Differences:
1. Individual Differences.
2. Society Shape contact effects.