contact hypothesis cognitive psychology

Allport’s Intergroup Contact Hypothesis: Its History and Influence

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

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Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Contact hypothesis was proposed by Gordon Allport (1897-1967) and states that social contact between social groups is sufficient to reduce intergroup prejudice.

However, empirical evidence suggests that this is only in certain circumstances.

Key Takeaways:

• The contact hypothesis fundamentally rests on the idea that ingroups who have more interactions with a certain outgroup tend to develop more positive perceptions and fewer negative perceptions of that outgroup.
• Theorists have long been interested in intergroup conflict . However, Robin Williams and Gordon Allport proposed a number of conditions for ameliorating intergroup conflict that has formed the basis of empirical research for several decades.
• Allport suggests four “positive factors” leading to better intergroup relations; however, recent research suggests that these factors can facilitate but are not necessary for reducing intergroup prejudice.
• Although originally studied in the context of race and ethnic relations, the contact hypothesis has applicability between ingroup-outgroup relations across religion, age, sexuality, disease status, economic circumstances, and so on.

Contact Hypothesis

The Contact Hypothesis is a psychological theory that suggests that direct contact between members of different social or cultural groups can reduce prejudice, improve intergroup relations, and promote mutual understanding.

According to this hypothesis, interpersonal contact can lead to positive attitudes, decreased stereotypes, and increased acceptance between individuals from different groups under certain conditions.

The Contact Hypothesis was first proposed by Gordon W. Allport in 1954 and has since been supported by numerous studies in the field of social psychology. T

The contact theory suggests that contact between groups is more likely to be effective in reducing prejudice and improving relations if it meets specific criteria:

1. Equal Status Between Groups

Members of the contact situation should not have an unequal, hierarchical relationship (e.g., teacher/student, employer/employee).

Both groups perceive the other to be of equal status in the situation (Cohen, 1982; Riordan and Ruggiero, 1980; Pettigrew and Tropp, 2005).

Although some scholars emphasize that groups should be of equal status both prior to (Brewer and Kramer, 1985) and during (Foster and Finchilescu, 1986) a contact situation, research demonstrated that equal status could promote positive intergroup attitudes even when the groups initially differ in status (Patchen, 1982; Schofield and Rich-Fulcher, 2001).

2. Common Goals

Members must rely on each other to achieve their shared desired goal. To have effective contact, typically, groups need to be making an active effort toward a goal that the groups share.

For example, a national football team (Chu and Griffey, 1985; Patchen, 1982) could draw from many people of different races and ethnic origins — people from different groups — in working together and replying to each other to achieve their shared goals of winning. This tends to lead to Allport’s third characteristic of intergroup contact; intergroup cooperation (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2005).

3. Intergroup Cooperation

Members should work together in a non-competitive environment.

According to Allport (1954), the attainment of these common goals must be based on cooperation over competition. For example, in Sheriff et al. ‘s (1961) Robbers’ Cave field study , researchers devised barriers to common goals, such as a planned picnic that could only be resolved with cooperation between both groups.

This intergroup cooperation encourages positive relations between the groups. Another instance of intergroup cooperation has been studied in schools (e.g., Brewer and Miller, 1984; Johnson, Johnson, and Maruyama, 1984; Schofield, 1986).

For example, Elliot Aronson developed a “jigsaw” approach such that students from diverse backgrounds work toward common goals, fostering positive relationships among children worldwide (Aronson, 2002).

4. The Support of Authorities, Law, or Custom

The support of authorities, law, and customs also tend to lead to more positive intergroup contact effects because authorities can establish norms of acceptance and guidelines for how group members should interact with each other.

There should not be official laws enforcing segregation. This importance has been demonstrated in such wide-ranging circumstances as the military (Landis, Hope, and Day, 1983), business (Morrison and Herlihy, 1992), and religion (Parker, 1968).

Legislation, such as the civil-rights acts in American society, can also be instrumental in establishing anti-prejudicial norms (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2005).

5. Positive Contact Norms

The belief in positive contact norms refers to the understanding that positive interactions between individuals from different groups are the norm and valued by society.

When individuals perceive that positive contact is socially accepted and encouraged, it can increase the effectiveness of intergroup contact.

6. Personal Accountability

A belief in personal accountability for one’s actions and attitudes is important for effective intergroup contact.

Taking responsibility for one’s biases, stereotypes, and prejudices and actively working towards changing them, can contribute to positive intergroup relationships.

7. Empathy and Perspective-Taking

The belief in the importance of empathy and perspective-taking can enhance intergroup contact.

When individuals try to understand and empathize with the experiences and perspectives of members from other groups, it can lead to greater mutual understanding and positive relationships.

Why Does Contact Reduce Prejudice?

Brewer and Miller (1996) and Brewer and Brown (1998) suggest that these conditions can be viewed as an application of dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957).

Specifically, when individuals with negative attitudes toward specific groups find themselves in situations in which they engage in positive social interactions with members of those groups, their behavior is inconsistent with their attitudes.

This dissonance, it is theorized, may result in a change of attitude to justify the new behavior if the situation is structured so as to satisfy the above four conditions.

In contrast, Forbes (1997) asserts that most social scientists implicitly assume that increased interracial/ethnic contact reduces tension between groups by giving each information about the other.

Those who write, adopt, participate in or evaluate prejudice reduction programs are likely to have explicit or implicit informal theories about how prejudice reduction programs work.

Examples of Contact Hypothesis

Homelessness.

Historically, in contact hypothesis research, racial and ethnic minorities have been the out-group of choice; however, the hypothesis can extend to out-groups created by a number of factors. One such alienating situation is homelessness.

Like many out-groups, homeless people are more visible than they once were because of their growth in number as well as extensive media and policy coverage.

This has elicited a large amount of stigmatization and associations between homelessness and poor physical and mental health, substance abuse, and criminality, and ethnographic studies have revealed that homeless people are regularly degraded, avoided, or treated as non-persons by passersby (Anderson, Snow, and Cress, 1994).

Lee, Farrell, and Link (2004) used data from a national survey of public attitudes toward homeless people to evaluate the applicability of the contact hypothesis to relationships between homeless and housed people, even in the absence of Allport’s four positive factors.

The researchers found that even taking selection and social desirability biases into account, general exposure to homeless people tended to affect public attitudes toward homeless people favorably (Lee, Farrell, and Link, 2004).

Contact Between Age Groups

In the 1980s, there was a trend of pervasive age segregation in American society, with children and adults tending to pursue their own separate and independent lives (Caspi, 1984).

This had consequences such as a lack of transmission of work skills and culture, poor preparation for parenthood, and generally inaccurate stereotypes and unfavorable attitudes toward other age groups.

Caspi (1984) assessed the effects of cross-age contact on the attitudes of children toward older adults by comparing children attending an age-integrated preschool to children attending a traditional preschool.

Those in the age-integrated preschool (having daily contact with older adults) tended to hold positive attitudes toward older adults, while those without such contact tended to hold vague or indifferent attitudes.

In addition, children placed in the age-integrated preschool show better differentiation between adult age groups than those not in that preschool.

These findings were among the first to suggest that Allport’s contact hypothesis held relevance in intergroup contact beyond race relations (Caspi, 1984).

Contact Between Religious Groups in Indonesia and the Philippines

Following a resurgence of religion-related conflict and religiously motivated intolerance and violence and the 1999-2002 outbreak of sectarian violence in Ambon, Indonesia, between Christians and Muslims, researchers have become motivated to find ways to reduce acts of religiously motivated intolerance.

Kanas, Scheepers, and Sterkens (2015) examined the relationship between interreligious contact and negative attitudes toward religious out-groups by conducting surveys of Christian and Muslim students in Indonesia and the Philippines.

They attempted to answer the following questions (Kanas, Sccheeepers, and Sterkens, 2015):

• Does positive interreligious contact reduce, while negative interreligious contact induces negative attitudes towards the religious out-group?
• Does the perception of group threat provide a valid mechanism for both the positive and negative effects of interreligious contact?
• Does positive interreligious contact reduce negative out-group attitudes when intergroup relations are tense and both groups experience extreme conflict and violence?

The researchers focused on four ethnically and religiously diverse regions of Indonesia and the Philippines: Maluku and Yogyakarta, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and Metro Manila, with Maluku and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao having more substantial religious conflicts than the other two regions.

Kanas, Scheepers, and Sterkens found that even accounting for the effects of self-selection, interreligious friendships reduced negative attitudes toward the religious out-group, while casual interreligious contact tended to increase negative out-group attitudes.

In regions experiencing more interreligious violence, there was no effect on interreligious friendships but a further deterioration in effect between casual interreligious contact and negative out-group attitudes.

Kanas, Scheepers, and Sterrkens believed that this effect could be explained by perceived group threat.

Evaluating the Contact Hypothesis

Allport’s testable formulation of the Contact Hypothesis has spawned research using a wide range of approaches, such as field studies, laboratory experiments, surveys, and archival research.

Pettigrew and Tropp (2005) conducted a 5-year meta-analysis on 515 studies (a method where researchers gather data from every possible study and statistically pool results to examine overall patterns) to uncover the overall effects of intergroup contact on prejudice and assess the specific factors that Allport identified as important for successful intergroup contact.

These studies ranged from the 1940s to the year 2000 and represented responses from 250,493 individuals across 38 countries.

The researchers found that, in general, greater levels of intergroup contact were associated with lower levels of prejudice and that more rigorous research studies actually revealed stronger relationships between contact and lowered prejudice (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2005).

The meta-analysis showed that the positive effects of contact on group relations vary dramatically between the nature of the groups, such as age, sexual orientation, disability, and mental illness, with the largest contact effects emerging for contact between heterosexuals and non-heterosexuals.

The smallest contact effects happened between those with and without mental and physical disabilities (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2005).

Although meta-analyses, such as Pettigrew and Tropp’s (2005) show that there is a strong association between intergroup contact and decreased prejudice, whether or not Allport’s four conditions hold is more widely contested.

Some researchers have suggested that the inverse relationship between contact and prejudice still persists in situations that do not match Allport’s key conditions, albeit not as strong as when they are present (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2005).

Gordon Allport taught sociology as a young man in Turkey (Nicholson, 2003) but emphasized proximal and immediate causes and disregarded larger-level, societal causes of intergroup effects.

As a result, both Allport and Williams (1947) doubted whether contact in itself reduced intergroup prejudice and thus attempted to specify a set of “positive conditions” where intergroup contact did.

Researchers have criticized Allport’s “positive factors” approach because it invites the addition of different situational conditions thought to be crucial that actually are not.

As a result, a number of researchers have proposed a host of additional conditions needed to achieve positive contact outcomes (e.g., Foster and Finchilescu, 1986) to the extent that it is unlikely that any contact situation would actually meet all of the conditions specified by the body of contact hypothesis researchers (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2005).

Researchers have also criticized Allport for not specifying the processes involved in intergroup contact’s effects or how these apply to other situations, the entire outgroup, or outgroups not involved in the contact (Pettigrew, 1998).

For example, Allport’s contact conditions leave open the question of whether contact with one group could lead to less prejudicial opinions of other outgroups.

All in all, Allport’s hypothesis neither reveals the processes behind the factors leading to the intergroup contact effect nor its effects on outgroups not involved in contact (Pettigrew, 1998).

Theorists have since pivoted their stance on the intergroup contact hypothesis to believing that intergroup contact generally diminishes prejudice but that a large number of facilitating factors can increase or decrease the magnitude of the effect.

In fact, according to newer theoretical approaches, there are negative factors that can even subvert the way that contact normally reduces prejudice (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2005).

For example, groups that tend to feel anxiety and threat toward others tend to have less decreased prejudice when put in contact with other groups (Blair, Park, and Bachelor, 2003; Stephan et al., 2002).

Indeed, more recent research into the contact hypothesis has suggested that the underlying mechanism of the phenomenon is not increased knowledge about the out-group in itself but empathy with the out-group and a reduction in intergroup threat and anxiety (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2008; Kanas, Scheepers, and Sterkens, 2015).

Social Darwinists such as William Graham Sumner (1906) believed that intergroup contact almost inevitably leads to conflict. Sumner believed that because most groups believed themselves to be superior, intergroup hostility and conflict were natural and inevitable outcomes of contact.

Perspectives such as those in Jackson (1983) and Levine and Campbell (1972) make similar predictions. In the twentieth century, perspectives began to diversify.

While some theorists believed that contact between in groups, such as between races, bred “suspicion, fear, resentment, disturbance, and at times open conflict” (Baker, 1934), others, such as Lett (1945), believed that interracial contact led to “mutual understanding and regard.”

Nonetheless, these early investigations were speculative rather than empirical (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2005). The emerging field of social psychology emphasized theories of intergroup contact.

The University of Alabama researchers Sims and Patrick (1936) were among the first to conduct a study on intergroup contact but found, discouragingly, that the anti-black attitudes of northern white students increased when immersed in the then all-white University of Alabama.

Aligning more with the later work of Allport, Brophy (1946) studied race relations between blacks and whites in the nearly-desegregated Merchant Marine. The researchers found that the more voyages that white seamen took with black seamen, the more positive their racial attitudes became.

In a similar direction, white police in Philadelphia with black colleagues showed fewer objections to working with black partners, having black people join previously all-white police districts, and taking orders from qualified black police officers (Kephart, 1957; Pettigrew and Tropp, 2005).

Following these studies, Cornell University sociologist Robin Williams Jr. offered 102 propositions on intergroup relations that constituted an initial formulation of intergroup contact theory.

These propositions generally stressed that intergroup contact reduces prejudice when (Williams, 1947):

• The two groups share similar statuses, interests, and tasks;
• the situation fosters personal, intimate intergroup contact;
• participants do not fit stereotypical conceptions of their group members;
• the activities cut across group lines.

Stouffer et al. offered the first extensive field study of the effects of intergroup contact (1949).

Stouffer et al. demonstrated that white soldiers who fought alongside black soldiers in the 1944-1945 Battle of the Bulge tended to have far more positive attitudes toward their black colleagues (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2005), regardless of status or place of origin.

Researchers such as Deutsch and Collins (1951); Wilner, Walkley, and Cook (1955); and Works (1961) supported mounting evidence that contact diminished racial prejudice among both blacks and whites through their studies of racially desegregated housing projects.

Allport, G. W. (1955). The nature of prejudice. In: JSTOR.

Anderson, L., Snow, D. A., & Cress, D. (1994). Negotiating the public realm: Stigma management and collective action among the homeless. Research in Community Sociology, 1(1), 121-143.

Aronson, E. (2002). Building empathy, compassion, and achievement in the jigsaw classroom. In Improving academic achievement (pp. 209-225): Elsevier.

Baker, P. E. (1934). Negro-white adjustment in America. Journal of Negro Education, 194-204.

Blair, I. V., Park, B., & Bachelor, J. (2003). Understanding Intergroup Anxiety: Are Some People More Anxious than Others? Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 6(2), 151-169. doi:10.1177/1368430203006002002

Brewer, M. B., & Kramer, R. M. (1985). The psychology of intergroup attitudes and behavior. Annual review of psychology, 36(1), 219-243.

Brophy, I. N. (1945). The luxury of anti-Negro prejudice. Public opinion quarterly, 9(4), 456-466.

Caspi, A. (1984). Contact Hypothesis and Inter-Age Attitudes: A Field Study of Cross-Age Contact. Social Psychology Quarterly, 47(1), 74-80. doi:10.2307/3033890

Chu, D., & Griffey, D. (1985). The contact theory of racial integration: The case of sport. Sociology of Sport Journal, 2(4), 323-333.

Cohen, E. G. (1982). Expectation states and interracial interaction in school settings. Annual review of sociology, 8(1), 209-235.

Deutsch, M., & Collins, M. E. (1951). Interracial housing: A psychological evaluation of a social experiment: U of Minnesota Press.

Foster, D., & Finchilescu, G. (1986). Contact in a”non-contact”society: The case of South Africa.

Jackson, J. W. (1993). Contact theory of intergroup hostility: A review and evaluation of the theoretical and empirical literature. International Journal of Group Tensions, 23(1), 43-65.

Jackson, P. (1985). Social geography: race and racism. Progress in Human Geography, 9(1), 99-108.

Johnson, D., Johnson, R., & Maruyama, G. (1984). Goal Interdependence and Interpersonal-personal Attraction in Heterogeneous Classrooms: a meta analysis, chapter in Miller N & Brewer MB Groups in Contact: The Psychology of Desegregation. In: New York: Academic Press.

Kanas, A., Scheepers, P., & Sterkens, C. (2015). Interreligious Contact, Perceived Group Threat, and Perceived Discrimination:Predicting Negative Attitudes among Religious Minorities and Majorities in Indonesia. Social Psychology Quarterly, 78(2), 102-126. doi:10.1177/0190272514564790

Kephart, W. M. (2018). Racial factors and urban law enforcement: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Kramer, B. M. (1950). Residential contact as a determinant of attitudes toward Negroes. Harvard University.

Lee, B. A., Farrell, C. R., & Link, B. G. (2004). Revisiting the Contact Hypothesis: The Case of Public Exposure to Homelessness. American Sociological Review, 69(1), 40-63. doi:10.1177/000312240406900104

Lee, F. F. (1956). Human Relations in Interracial Housing: A Study of the Contact Hypothesis. In: JSTOR.

Lett, H. A. (1945). Techniques for achieving interracial cooperation. Harvard Educational Review, 15(1), 62-71.

LeVine, R. A., & Campbell, D. T. (1972). Ethnocentrism: Theories of conflict, ethnic attitudes, and group behavior.

MacKenzie, B. K. (1948). The importance of contact in determining attitudes toward Negroes. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 43(4), 417.

Morrison, E. W., & Herlihy, J. M. (1992). Becoming the best place to work: Managing diversity at American Express Travel related services. Diversity in the Workplace, 203-226.

Nicholson, I. A. M. (2003). Inventing personality: Gordon Allport and the science of selfhood. Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association.

Parker, J. H. (1968). The Interaction of Negroes and Whites in an Integrated Church Setting. Social Forces, 46(3), 359-366. doi:10.2307/2574883

Pettigrew, T. F. (1998). INTERGROUP CONTACT THEORY. Annual review of psychology, 49(1), 65-85. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.49.1.65

Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2005). Allport’s intergroup contact hypothesis: Its history and influence. On the nature of prejudice: Fifty years after Allport, 262-277.

Riordan, C., & Ruggiero, J. (1980). Producing equal-status interracial interaction: A replication. Social Psychology Quarterly, 131-136. Schofield, J. W. (1986). Black-White contact in desegregated schools.

Schofield, J. W., & Eurich-Fulcer, R. (2004). When and How School Desegregation Improves Intergroup Relations.

Sims, V. M., & Patrick, J. R. (1936). Attitude toward the Negro of northern and southern college students. The Journal of Social Psychology, 7(2), 192-204.

Stephan, W. G., Boniecki, K. A., Ybarra, O., Bettencourt, A., Ervin, K. S., Jackson, L. A., . . . Renfro, C. L. (2002). The Role of Threats in the Racial Attitudes of Blacks and Whites. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(9), 1242-1254. doi:10.1177/01461672022812009

Stouffer, S. A., Suchman, E. A., DeVinney, L. C., Star, S. A., & Williams Jr, R. M. (1949). The american soldier: Adjustment during army life.(studies in social psychology in world war ii), vol. 1.

Sumner, W. G. (1906). Folkways: The Sociological Importance of Usages. Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals, Ginn & Co., New York, NY.

Williams Jr, R. M. (1947). The reduction of intergroup tensions: a survey of research on problems of ethnic, racial, and religious group relations. Social Science Research Council Bulletin.

Works, E. (1961). The prejudice-interaction hypothesis from the point of view of the Negro minority group. American Journal of Sociology, 67(1), 47-52.

Further Information

Dovidio, J. F., Love, A., Schellhaas, F. M., & Hewstone, M. (2017). Reducing intergroup bias through intergroup contact: Twenty years of progress and future directions. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 20(5), 606-620.

Pettigrew, T. F., Tropp, L. R., Wagner, U., & Christ, O. (2011). Recent advances in intergroup contact theory. International journal of intercultural relations, 35(3), 271-280.

Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of personality and social psychology, 90(5), 751.

What Is the Contact Hypothesis in Psychology?

Can getting to know members of other groups reduce prejudice?

Jacob Ammentorp Lund / Getty Images 

• Archaeology
• Ph.D., Psychology, University of California - Santa Barbara
• B.A., Psychology and Peace & Conflict Studies, University of California - Berkeley

The contact hypothesis is a theory in psychology which suggests that prejudice and conflict between groups can be reduced if members of the groups interact with each other.

Key Takeaways: Contact Hypothesis

• The contact hypothesis suggests that interpersonal contact between groups can reduce prejudice.
• According to Gordon Allport, who first proposed the theory, four conditions are necessary to reduce prejudice: equal status, common goals, cooperation, and institutional support.
• While the contact hypothesis has been studied most often in the context of racial prejudice, researchers have found that contact was able to reduce prejudice against members of a variety of marginalized groups.

Historical Background

The contact hypothesis was developed in the middle of the 20th century by researchers who were interested in understanding how conflict and prejudice could be reduced. Studies in the 1940s and 1950s , for example, found that contact with members of other groups was related to lower levels of prejudice. In one study from 1951 , researchers looked at how living in segregated or desegregated housing units was related to prejudice and found that, in New York (where housing was desegregated), white study participants reported lower prejudice than white participants in Newark (where housing was still segregated).

One of the key early theorists studying the contact hypothesis was Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport , who published the influential book The Nature of Prejudice in 1954. In his book, Allport reviewed previous research on intergroup contact and prejudice. He found that contact reduced prejudice in some instances, but it wasn’t a panacea—there were also cases where intergroup contact made prejudice and conflict worse. In order to account for this, Allport sought to figure out when contact worked to reduce prejudice successfully, and he developed four conditions that have been studied by later researchers.

Allport’s Four Conditions

According to Allport, contact between groups is most likely to reduce prejudice if the following four conditions are met:

• The members of the two groups have equal status. Allport believed that contact in which members of one group are treated as subordinate wouldn’t reduce prejudice—and could actually make things worse.
• The members of the two groups have common goals.
• The members of the two groups work cooperatively. Allport wrote , “Only the type of contact that leads people to do things together is likely to result in changed attitudes.”
• There is institutional support for the contact (for example, if group leaders or other authority figures support the contact between groups).

Evaluating the Contact Hypothesis

In the years since Allport published his original study, researchers have sought to test out empirically whether contact with other groups can reduce prejudice. In a 2006 paper, Thomas Pettigrew and Linda Tropp conducted a meta-analysis: they reviewed the results of over 500 previous studies—with approximately 250,000 research participants—and found support for the contact hypothesis. Moreover, they found that these results were not due to self-selection (i.e. people who were less prejudiced choosing to have contact with other groups, and people who were more prejudiced choosing to avoid contact), because contact had a beneficial effect even when participants hadn’t chosen whether or not to have contact with members of other groups.

While the contact hypothesis has been studied most often in the context of racial prejudice, the researchers found that contact was able to reduce prejudice against members of a variety of marginalized groups. For example, contact was able to reduce prejudice based on sexual orientation and prejudice against people with disabilities. The researchers also found that contact with members of one group not only reduced prejudice towards that particular group, but reduced prejudice towards members of other groups as well.

What about Allport’s four conditions? The researchers found a larger effect on prejudice reduction when at least one of Allport’s conditions was met. However, even in studies that didn’t meet Allport’s conditions, prejudice was still reduced—suggesting that Allport’s conditions may improve relationships between groups, but they aren’t strictly necessary.

Why Does Contact Reduce Prejudice?

Researchers have suggested that contact between groups can reduce prejudice because it reduces feelings of anxiety (people may be anxious about interacting with members of a group they have had little contact with). Contact may also reduce prejudice because it increases empathy and helps people to see things from the other group’s perspective. According to psychologist Thomas Pettigrew and his colleagues , contact with another group allows people “to sense how outgroup members feel and view the world.”

Psychologist John Dovidio and his colleagues suggested that contact may reduce prejudice because it changes how we categorize others. One effect of contact can be decategorization , which involves seeing someone as an individual, rather than as only a member of their group. Another outcome of contact can be recategorization , in which people no longer see someone as part of a group that they’re in conflict with, but rather as a member of a larger, shared group.

Another reason why contact is beneficial is because it fosters the formation of friendships across group lines.

Limitations and New Research Directions

Researchers have acknowledged that intergroup contact can backfire , especially if the situation is stressful, negative, or threatening, and the group members did not choose to have contact with the other group. In his 2019 book The Power of Human , psychology researcher Adam Waytz suggested that power dynamics may complicate intergroup contact situations, and that attempts to reconcile groups that are in conflict need to consider whether there is a power imbalance between the groups. For example, he suggested that, in situations where there is a power imbalance, interactions between group members may be more likely to be productive if the less powerful group is given the opportunity to express what their experiences have been, and if the more powerful group is encouraged to practice empathy and seeing things from the less powerful group’s perspective.

Can Contact Promote Allyship?

One especially promising possibility is that contact between groups might encourage more powerful majority group members to work as allies —that is, to work to end oppression and systematic injustices. For example, Dovidio and his colleagues suggested that “contact also provides a potentially powerful opportunity for majority-group members to foster political solidarity with the minority group.” Similarly, Tropp—one of the co-authors of the meta-analysis on contact and prejudice— tells New York Magazine’s The Cut that “there’s also the potential for contact to change the future behavior of historically advantaged groups to benefit the disadvantaged.”

While contact between groups isn’t a panacea, it’s a powerful tool to reduce conflict and prejudice—and it may even encourage members of more powerful groups to become allies who advocate for the rights of members of marginalized groups.

Sources and Additional Reading:

• Allport, G. W. The Nature of Prejudice . Oxford, England: Addison-Wesley, 1954. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1954-07324-000
• Dovidio, John F., et al. “Reducing Intergroup Bias Through Intergroup Contact: Twenty Years of Progress and Future Directions.”  Group Processes & Intergroup Relations , vol. 20, no. 5, 2017, pp. 606-620. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430217712052
• Pettigrew, Thomas F., et al. “Recent Advances in Intergroup Contact Theory.”  International Journal of Intercultural Relations , vol. 35 no. 3, 2011, pp. 271-280. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2011.03.001
• Pettigrew, Thomas F., and Linda R. Tropp. “A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory.”  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , vol. 90, no. 5, 2006, pp. 751-783. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.90.5.751
• Singal, Jesse. “The Contact Hypothesis Offers Hope for the World.” New York Magazine: The Cut , 10 Feb. 2017. https://www.thecut.com/2017/02/the-contact-hypothesis-offers-hope-for-the-world.html
• Waytz, Adam. The Power of Human: How Our Shared Humanity Can Help Us Create a Better World . W.W. Norton, 2019.
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Article contents

Intergroup contact.

• Danielle L. Blaylock Danielle L. Blaylock Queen's University Belfast
•  and  Nina Briggs Nina Briggs Queens University Belfast
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.269
• Published online: 22 February 2023

Formalized by Gordon Allport in 1954, the contact hypothesis posits that positive contact between members of different groups can, under certain conditions, reduce prejudice and promote more harmonious intergroup relations. These conditions include contact situations which promote equal status between group members, encourage the pursuit of common goals, are characterized by cooperation as opposed to competition, and have institutional support or authority sanction. Among social scientists, positive intergroup contact is among the most effective strategies for reducing prejudice, with an impressive research base attesting to its effectiveness across contexts and target-groups using a variety of methodological approaches. The effects of contact are found to generalize from the interaction partner to the wider outgroup, and to other secondary outgroups not directly involved in the contact experience; this is particularly true when group membership is made salient during the encounter. Contact can take a variety of direct forms, from more intense and sustained interactions between close friends to brief encounters between strangers, as well as more indirect forms such as intergroup interactions through various computer-mediated forums, imagined interactions between the self and an outgroup partner, to observation or awareness of interactions involving other ingroup and outgroup members. While several mediators have been suggested, the contact–prejudice relationship appears to be driven by a reduction in negative affect, such as anxiety, and by inducing positive affective processes, such as empathy. Evidence suggests that positive contact can be particularly beneficial for individuals with pre-existing negative attitudes. For members of advantaged groups, positive intergroup contact is associated with a greater support for intergroup equality and social change; however, for disadvantaged groups, positive intergroup contact can lead to a sedative effect where perceived intergroup harmony can reduce perceptions of inequality and dampen the motivation to engage in activity to support social change. Emerging research exploring the effects of negative contact experiences suggests that negative contact can exacerbate intergroup bias through similar and distinct routes as positive contact reduces it. Critics point to methodological concerns and a research base that neglects more complex and nuanced interactions found in the real world, particularly those in historically divided societies. However, recent technological and statistical innovations offer the potential to advance the field’s understanding of how positive intergroup contact can be used to promote a more harmonious society.

• group categorization
• indirect contact
• intergroup interactions
• interventions
• negative contact
• positive contact
• prejudice reduction
• social change

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Intergroup Contact Theory

• First Online: 02 July 2019

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• Oliver Christ 3 &
• Mathias Kauff 3  

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Bringing members of different social groups into contact is thought to be as one of the most promising approaches for improving intergroup relations. Indeed, a plethora of studies has shown that this intergroup contact is an effective means not only to reduce mutual prejudice but also to increase trust and forgiveness. In this chapter, we will first review evidence for the effectiveness of intergroup contact and introduce different forms of intergroup contact – direct (i.e., face-to-face contact) as well as more indirect forms of contact (i.e., extended, vicarious, and imagined contact). We will then discuss moderators (e.g., types of in- and outgroup categorization) and mediators (e.g., intergroup anxiety and empathy) of contact effects as well as potential unintended effects of intergroup contact. Finally, we will summarize research on the effectiveness of intergroup contact interventions and give two examples of such interventions that have been implemented in the context of conflictual intergroup relations (i.e., Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Hutu-Tutsi conflict in Rwanda).

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Christ, O., Kauff, M. (2019). Intergroup Contact Theory. In: Sassenberg, K., Vliek, M.L.W. (eds) Social Psychology in Action. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13788-5_10

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The “contact hypothesis”: Critical reflections and future directions

Mckeown s., dixon j..

Research on intergroup contact has grown exponentially over the past decade. Such research has typically extolled the benefits of positive interaction between members of historically divided communities, particularly on outcomes related to prejudice reduction. Emerging work in the field, however, has qualified this optimistic picture by identifying three gaps in the existing literature. First, in everyday life, contact may be construed as a negative experience that increases rather than decreases responses such as prejudice, anxiety, and avoidance. Second, in real-life settings, contact is often circumscribed by informal practices of (re)segregation that are easily overlooked if researchers rely primarily on examining structured contact and explicit processes using primarily laboratory and questionnaire methods. Third, positive contact may have “ironic” effects on the political attitudes and behaviors of the historically disadvantaged, undermining their recognition of social injustice and decreasing their willingness to engage in collective action to challenge the status quo. Although it is now a truism that intergroup contact can reduce intergroup prejudice, these developments emphasize the importance of maintaining a critical perspective on the “contact hypothesis” as a model for promoting social change in historically divided and unequal societies. They also lay the foundations for future developments in the field.

Original publication

10.1111/spc3.12295

Journal article

Social and Personality Psychology Compass

Publication Date

This page has been archived and is no longer being updated regularly.

All you need is contact

November 2001, Vol 32, No. 10

A longstanding line of research that aims to combat bias among conflicting groups springs from a theory called the "contact hypothesis." Developed in the 1950s by Gordon Allport, PhD, the theory holds that contact between two groups can promote tolerance and acceptance, but only under certain conditions, such as equal status among groups and common goals. Since the theory's inception, psychologists have added more and more criteria to what is required of groups in order for "contact" to work.

Recently, however, University of California, Santa Cruz research psychologist Thomas Pettigrew, PhD, has turned this research finding on its head. In a new meta-analysis of 500 studies, he finds that all that's needed for greater understanding between groups is contact, period, in all but the most hostile and threatening conditions. There is, however, a larger positive effect if some of the extra conditions are met.

His analysis turned up another unexpected finding that also runs counter to the direction of the field. The reason contact works, his analysis finds, is not purely or even mostly cognitive, but emotional.

"Your stereotypes about the other group don't necessarily change," Pettigrew explains, "but you grow to like them anyway."

Pettigrew is currently submitting his study for review; the basic findings can also be found in a chapter by him and Linda Tropp, PhD, in the book "Reducing Prejudice and Discrimination" (Erlbaum, 2000).

--T. DeANGELIS

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Imagined Contact Hypothesis

The COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t just a tough time in world history - it was also specifically a dividing and polarizing time in American history. The country was gearing up for one of the most contentious elections that anyone could remember. Divisions were drawn between Democrats and Republicans; “pro-maskers” and “anti-maskers,” people who waited for the COVID-19 vaccination and those who only believed it would cause more harm. And what’s worse, there was little contact between these two groups. The isolation and separation of people to their individual homes may have saved lives and reduced the spread of COVID-19, but it definitely pushed us further apart.

America is not new to groups being separated. From the 18th century until the 1960s, the country was segregated. Entire cities were divided, and not just in the soda fountains or the bathrooms. White people might live or go to school on one side of the highway (like they did in Austin, Texas ) while people of color lived and went to school on the other side.

We know how dangerous this type of segregation and separation is. Warring political parties get nothing done to help their constituents. People who are considered “lesser” than the privileged or more powerful groups face a higher risk of discrimination, bullying, or downright violence. Separating different groups based on race, sex, political party, sexual orientation, religion, or ethnicity is simply harmful.

Psychologists know that, despite the harm caused by ingroups and outgroups, this has been a part of human existence since our species first appeared on Earth. They also know, through decades of research, that there is a way to reduce ingroup and outgroup biases and create a society where people from all groups can live and work together without threats of violence or fighting.

And this solution isn’t as complicated as you might think. In fact, it starts with just thinking.

Intergroup Contact Theory

Before we talk about thinking your way into a more inclusive world, let’s talk about Intergroup Contact Theory. In 1954, Gordon Allport introduced this idea in his book, The Nature of Prejudice. The idea is simple: contact between two groups could reduce prejudice between the people within those groups.

This idea doesn’t discriminate. It can work to reduce racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ageism, or ableism. And although it sounds simple, you can probably think of some examples from your real life in which a family member or a friend changed their opinions about minority groups after interacting with someone in that group. Maybe a friend’s parents came around to support gay marriage after your friend came out to them, or a colleague changed their opinion on the existence of whether privilege exists after talking to someone who doesn’t have said privilege.

But even if you can’t think of an example yourself, psychology has your back. Plenty of studies on intergroup contact theory show that positive contact between people in different groups can help to reduce prejudice. In 2003, for example, studies showed that white athletes who played team sports with Black athletes held less prejudice than white athletes who played individual sports. Large analyses of studies on this topic show that even when contact is “unstructured,” that contact is likely to reduce prejudice among all “outgroups,” including the LGBTQ community, people of color, and people with disabilities.

It seems that the best way to reduce any prejudice you have is to go out and have contact with the people you have prejudices about!

What About Negative Contact?

Of course, you might find yourself thinking about all the times your family got in Facebook fights with someone on the other side of the political aisle. It’s important to note that while psychologists believe that negative contact can be more powerful than positive contact, positive contact is more likely to happen in person. Intentionally going out into the world, meeting new people, and talking to them about their experiences is the best way to reduce prejudice and become a more inclusive person.

This Isn’t Always Possible

This wasn’t always a possibility in the COVID-19 pandemic. The whole point of lockdowns was to stay home and keep everybody safe! Plus, decades of segregation, redlining and other factors don’t always encourage intermingling between ingroups and outgroups. You may not know or hang out with people who have a different religion than you, who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community, or who are of a different race or social class than you. So what do you do then? Well, you might be surprised to know that just imagining these positive interactions can help reduce prejudice, too.

Imagined Contact Theory

That’s right! In 2008, researchers took the Intergroup Contact Theory one step further. What would happen if people simply imagined that they were having positive interactions with someone in an “outgroup?”

They attempted to answer the question like this: researchers separated different groups of participants into two groups. One group was instructed to think about a positive interaction with an elderly person. The other group was instructed to think about an empty field. Once the exercise was over, the researchers measured the potential for prejudice against the elderly among the participants.

As it turned out, the groups who had imagined the positive interaction with the elderly reported lower prejudice against the elderly than the groups who were told just to think about an empty field. There were no elderly people involved in the study - just imagination.

Through further studies of imagined contact theory, researchers have found that simply imagining positive interactions with people can help you improve your attitude, increase your desire for contact with others, and improve how you work within groups. Having trouble with a group project at school? Imagine it going well before you head to class. Worried about how you will interact with your family during your next Thanksgiving dinner? Imagine an evening of laughs and good conversation. Frustrated at people who might be on the other side of the aisle than you? Picture yourselves sitting down and having a conversation in which you both see eye to eye. You might just be more willing to have that conversation.

The Power of Imagination

Sure, this can sound pretty crazy, but the mind does some pretty crazy things. In fact, many psychologists would agree that this exercise is so powerful because the mind has trouble knowing the difference between what is real and what is imagined. We scream and cry when we have nightmares. Reliving trauma in our minds can be just as harmful as experiencing it for the first time. Imagination isn’t just a silly thing that we do when we are children or we are bored - the thoughts we have can make an impact.

One way to look at the Imagined Contact Theory is to think about manifestation. When we want to manifest something, we picture it over and over in our minds. We repeat affirmations that we don’t necessarily believe. And while picturing a new car in our minds won’t make a car appear in front of us, it will put us in the right mindset to work for that car, save money for that car, and look for opportunities to get that car.

Imagined contact theory can do the same thing. Simply imagining a positive interaction with anyone won’t change who they are. But when you are prepared to have a positive interaction with someone, you might let small things go, give people the benefit of the doubt, or try to see things from their point of view. We do these things for the people we love - why can’t we do them for the people that we used to judge?

Guided Meditations Can Help

This can still feel like a strange practice to try. If you don’t know where to begin, try out a loving-kindness meditation. This type of Buddhist meditation asks you to send love and positivity out to yourself, people you love, people you don’t always love, and all people of the world. This isn’t always easy to do, but starting by sending love to people that you already love can help you ease into this practice and spread the love even further.

The same approach can be taken with imagined contact. First, think about walking through a nice park on a warm, sunny day. Imagine that you come into contact with friends or family that you love. Picture a lovely conversation between all of you - everyone is laughing and smiling. Next, picture in your mind that someone in the group introduces someone who you might be skeptical about at first. But everyone in the group is accepting and welcoming of them. As the conversation continues, all of you laugh together. Everyone keeps an open mind, shares, and has positive feelings at the end of the day.

See, how hard was that? This simple exercise can help you before interacting with anyone who might make you uncomfortable or nervous for whatever reason. Manifest positive interactions with imagined contact!

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What Is Cognitive Psychology?

The Science of How We Think

Topics in Cognitive Psychology

• Current Research
• Cognitive Approach in Practice

Careers in Cognitive Psychology

How cognitive psychology differs from other branches of psychology, frequently asked questions.

Cognitive psychology is the study of internal mental processes—all of the workings inside your brain, including perception, thinking, memory, attention, language, problem-solving, and learning. Learning about how people think and process information helps researchers and psychologists understand the human brain and assist people with psychological difficulties.

This article discusses what cognitive psychology is—its history, current trends, practical applications, and career paths.

Findings from cognitive psychology help us understand how people think, including how they acquire and store memories. By knowing more about how these processes work, psychologists can develop new ways of helping people with cognitive problems.

Cognitive psychologists explore a wide variety of topics related to thinking processes. Some of these include: 

• Attention --our ability to process information in the environment while tuning out irrelevant details
• Choice-based behavior --actions driven by a choice among other possibilities
• Decision-making
• Information processing
• Language acquisition --how we learn to read, write, and express ourselves
• Problem-solving
• Speech perception -how we process what others are saying
• Visual perception --how we see the physical world around us

History of Cognitive Psychology

Although it is a relatively young branch of psychology , it has quickly grown to become one of the most popular subfields. Cognitive psychology grew into prominence between the 1950s and 1970s.

Prior to this time, behaviorism was the dominant perspective in psychology. This theory holds that we learn all our behaviors from interacting with our environment. It focuses strictly on observable behavior, not thought and emotion. Then, researchers became more interested in the internal processes that affect behavior instead of just the behavior itself. 

This shift is often referred to as the cognitive revolution in psychology. During this time, a great deal of research on topics including memory, attention, and language acquisition began to emerge. 

In 1967, the psychologist Ulric Neisser introduced the term cognitive psychology, which he defined as the study of the processes behind the perception, transformation, storage, and recovery of information.

Cognitive psychology became more prominent after the 1950s as a result of the cognitive revolution.

Current Research in Cognitive Psychology

The field of cognitive psychology is both broad and diverse. It touches on many aspects of daily life. There are numerous practical applications for this research, such as providing help coping with memory disorders, making better decisions , recovering from brain injury, treating learning disorders, and structuring educational curricula to enhance learning.

Current research on cognitive psychology helps play a role in how professionals approach the treatment of mental illness, traumatic brain injury, and degenerative brain diseases.

Thanks to the work of cognitive psychologists, we can better pinpoint ways to measure human intellectual abilities, develop new strategies to combat memory problems, and decode the workings of the human brain—all of which ultimately have a powerful impact on how we treat cognitive disorders.

The field of cognitive psychology is a rapidly growing area that continues to add to our understanding of the many influences that mental processes have on our health and daily lives.

From understanding how cognitive processes change as a child develops to looking at how the brain transforms sensory inputs into perceptions, cognitive psychology has helped us gain a deeper and richer understanding of the many mental events that contribute to our daily existence and overall well-being.

The Cognitive Approach in Practice

In addition to adding to our understanding of how the human mind works, the field of cognitive psychology has also had an impact on approaches to mental health. Before the 1970s, many mental health treatments were focused more on psychoanalytic , behavioral , and humanistic approaches.

The so-called "cognitive revolution" put a greater emphasis on understanding the way people process information and how thinking patterns might contribute to psychological distress. Thanks to research in this area, new approaches to treatment were developed to help treat depression, anxiety, phobias, and other psychological disorders .

Cognitive behavioral therapy and rational emotive behavior therapy are two methods in which clients and therapists focus on the underlying cognitions, or thoughts, that contribute to psychological distress.

What Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an approach that helps clients identify irrational beliefs and other cognitive distortions that are in conflict with reality and then aid them in replacing such thoughts with more realistic, healthy beliefs.

If you are experiencing symptoms of a psychological disorder that would benefit from the use of cognitive approaches, you might see a psychologist who has specific training in these cognitive treatment methods.

These professionals frequently go by titles other than cognitive psychologists, such as psychiatrists, clinical psychologists , or counseling psychologists , but many of the strategies they use are rooted in the cognitive tradition.

Many cognitive psychologists specialize in research with universities or government agencies. Others take a clinical focus and work directly with people who are experiencing challenges related to mental processes. They work in hospitals, mental health clinics, and private practices.

Research psychologists in this area often concentrate on a particular topic, such as memory. Others work directly on health concerns related to cognition, such as degenerative brain disorders and brain injuries.

Treatments rooted in cognitive research focus on helping people replace negative thought patterns with more positive, realistic ones. With the help of cognitive psychologists, people are often able to find ways to cope and even overcome such difficulties.

Reasons to Consult a Cognitive Psychologist

• Alzheimer's disease, dementia, or memory loss
• Brain trauma treatment
• Cognitive therapy for a mental health condition
• Interventions for learning disabilities
• Perceptual or sensory issues
• Therapy for a speech or language disorder

Whereas behavioral and some other realms of psychology focus on actions--which are external and observable--cognitive psychology is instead concerned with the thought processes behind the behavior. Cognitive psychologists see the mind as if it were a computer, taking in and processing information, and seek to understand the various factors involved.

A Word From Verywell

Cognitive psychology plays an important role in understanding the processes of memory, attention, and learning. It can also provide insights into cognitive conditions that may affect how people function.

Being diagnosed with a brain or cognitive health problem can be daunting, but it is important to remember that you are not alone. Together with a healthcare provider, you can come up with an effective treatment plan to help address brain health and cognitive problems.

Your treatment may involve consulting with a cognitive psychologist who has a background in the specific area of concern that you are facing, or you may be referred to another mental health professional that has training and experience with your particular condition.

Ulric Neisser is considered the founder of cognitive psychology. He was the first to introduce the term and to define the field of cognitive psychology. His primary interests were in the areas of perception and memory, but he suggested that all aspects of human thought and behavior were relevant to the study of cognition.

A cognitive map refers to a mental representation of an environment. Such maps can be formed through observation as well as through trial and error. These cognitive maps allow people to orient themselves in their environment.

While they share some similarities, there are some important differences between cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology. While cognitive psychology focuses on thinking processes, cognitive neuroscience is focused on finding connections between thinking and specific brain activity. Cognitive neuroscience also looks at the underlying biology that influences how information is processed.

Cognitive psychology is a form of experimental psychology. Cognitive psychologists use experimental methods to study the internal mental processes that play a role in behavior.

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By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."