REDUCING PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION:The contact hypothesis

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Social Psychology (PSY403)

Lesson 27

REDUCING PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION

This lecture will explore the prospects for reducing prejudice and discrimination. Two techniques are

generally recommended for this purpose:

1. Contact hypothesis (group-based)

2. Re-categorization (Individual based): This approach is considered individual based as it is done by

changing people's thinking, The following 2 techniques are employed in this regard:

Combination

Subtypes and

individual uniqueness

The contact hypothesis

Contact between members of different social groups, under appropriate conditions, can lead to reductions

in intergroup bias (Allport, 1954; Amir, 1969)

Benefits of contact: Wright et al. (1997)

Participants divided into two teams

Compete against each other

One person from each team participated in an exercise to promote friendship with one member of the

opposing team

At each stage of the experiment asked to divide an imaginary $500 between the teams

The results of this experiment have been

The benefits of contact

illustrated below in Figure 1:

Conditions necessary for contact to

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reduce intergroup bias

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Mere contact between groups will not

necessarily reduce prejudice. It actually

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requires manipulation of a lot of

situational variables. Thirty years after

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Allport's contact hypothesis, studies

concluded that only contact is not enough,

should be pleasant, sustained and

cooperative than competitive. The

following conditions need to be fulfilled

for

contact to be effective for reducing

prejudice and discrimination

Social

norms favouring equality must be

place

After team building

After competition

After friendship

Phase of study

There

must be sustained close contact

Figure 1

Contact

must occur under conditions of equal social status

Contact

must be in the form of co-operative interaction

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Social Psychology (PSY403)

1. Social norms

The social conditions (government policy, schools, law) should all promote equality. Social norms have

a significant impact on determining people's intentions. It is where political and authority figures and

group leaders can play an important role. If they publicly state support for equality, others are likely to

follow that lead. If supervisors tell at work places that sex, race, or statements based on physical

characteristics will not be tolerated, such attitude can be reduced. On the other hand, if they oppose

intergroup contact, prejudice reduction is unlikely. Unfortunately many political and religious leaders

encourage segregation for their own benefits. In psychology, the use of a few terms for different

psychopathologies is discouraged for the same reasons, for example, alcoholics, schizophrenic,

mentally retarded, etc. Similarly instead of `Abnormal Psychology' use of `Mental health problems' is

recommended.

Cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957)

When attitudes are not in line with behaviour this causes an unpleasant internal state.

People are motivated to avoid this dissonance.

So, people are likely to change their attitudes to be in line with behaviour.

It follows that laws which prevent discriminatory behaviour can therefore eventually lead to changes in

attitudes

Sustained close contact

· Several studies conducted in 1940s and 1950s demonstrated the importance of this approach.

Studies conducted in France, UK, Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands demonstrate that

intergroup friendship can reduce subtle and blatant prejudice.

· Despite multicultural schools, prejudice is not decreased as children of different races segregate

themselves in corners of class, cafeteria and play grounds. Researchers suggest that children should

not be even sitting separately on the basis of their achievements.

Contact must be of sufficient frequency, duration, and closeness to allow the development of

meaningful inter-group relations. Cook (1978) refers to that by using the term of `acquaintance

potential', which means that participants get to know each other. In this way, bias relevant to media

portrayals can be removed.

Close contact will lead to generalisation of the increased positive attitude towards the individual to

the group as a whole (Cook, 1962)

Stephan & Rosenfield (1978): Increased quality contact did lead to improvement of White

Amercians' attitudes towards Mexican Americans

`Team sports' is used as an effective strategy in schools (Brown et al., 2003) for motivating

students to work together and work. Similarly `Jigsaw puzzle' technique is used in US schools for

promoting idea of working together and solving problems.

Study of Stephan & Stephan (1984)

Correlational path analysis revealed....Frequency and closeness of contact ---> increased knowledge about

the out-group ---> increased positivity of attitudes towards out-group

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Social Psychology (PSY403)

3. Equal social status

Status is another form of prejudice. Intergroup contact does not always breed goodwill. For example,

when it occurs between privileged and minority classes, it can in fact increase stereotypes and tension.

According to Allport, equal status majority, and equal status minority should have contacts within their

own groups. It implies that the groups interacting must be roughly equal in social status

the minority group has contact with the majority group as a subordinate then this is likely to perpetuate

negative stereotypes of inferiority

Teachers

in schools and supervisors at work conditions should avoid creating unequal status groups

4. Intergroup cooperation

· Co-operation is necessary for reductions in bias. As in the Robbers Cave Experiment (Sherif et al.,

1966), animosity between the Rattlers and Eagles subsided when they engaged in a joint activity to

achieve mutually shared goals (superordinate). Similar results have been obtained in a variety of

experimental and field settings, including schools, work, and the armed forces.

Superordinate goals and cooperation

Blanchard et al. (1975) showed that co-operation works best when the outcome of the superordinate goal is

successful

Study of Weigel et al (1975):

They compared the effects of cooperative vs.

0.9

traditional teaching techniques in newly

desegregated schools in USA.

0.8

0.7

Junior and senior high school children were

0.6

taken as subjects.

Conflict across

0.5

groups

60% white; 20% African Americans; 20%

0.4

Helping behaviour

Hispani

0.3

In cooperative classes, students worked in

0.2

racially mixed teams of 4-6 students and

0.1

cooperated as a group on all assignments

Teachers ethnically varied

T raditional

Cooperative

The results of traditional and cooperative

techniques of teaching can be clearly seen in Figure 2:

Figure 2: Effect of cooperative teaching in

newly desegregated schools

In essence, It has been concluded in different studies that contact is meaningless or even counterproductive

unless it has mutual goals, equal status, and sustained contact.

Problems with the contact hypothesis

Meta analysis of numerous studies testing Allport's contact hypothesis indicate that intergroup contact,

under certain conditions, does indeed have a substantial effect in reducing prejudice. However, a few

problems have also been pointed out in contact hypothesis:

utual intergroup anxiety: The minority may have stereotype threat that they will be evaluated negatively

by the majority. In contrast, majority group may be anxious of saying something negative.

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Social Psychology (PSY403)

an lead to a protective self-presentation style: Dominant group member talks less, while minority

interprets it as hostility. This communication can result in backfire.

eneralization - contact may lead to subtyping of the particular individual away from the group

representation (so category-based prejudice remains).

o, contact will only reduce bias if the individuals are highly typical members who cannot be subtype

away from the group so easily (Wilder, 1984).

ontact hypothesis is overly complex there are so many conditions under which contact must occur that

it becomes unworkable.

Can stereotyping be monitored through Recategorization

There are two viewpoints regarding the efforts to reduce prejudice:

1. Stereotyping thinking is an adaptive mental strategy that has allowed us to survive as a species

(Fox, 1992; Vaes et al., 2003). Some social psychologists maintain that we have to create in- and

out-groups for better functioning and for protecting the rights of our group. Moreover it saves our

cognitive resources for investing in other activities. They also indicate that being an automatic

process, stereotyped thinking can not be changed. Hence, they think that efforts to reduce prejudice

are futile.

2. Patricia Devine maintained that change is possible by conscious efforts. According to her, people

need to use cognitive efforts to reduce prejudice. She indicated that many people learn stereotypes

early in life so people may display unintended prejudiced responses. Positive change can only

occur if people make conscious effort to think more rationally and deductively.

Two types of recategorization:

ombination

Separate groups might be combined into one larger group for reducing prejudice, e.g., if Whites and Blacks

marry each other, the children will be of brown colour. This is what has happened in America. Although

racial discrimination has not totally abolished by this, it has helped at least in reducing prejudice against the

minorities. On similar lines, Zaat Beraadri intermarriages will help reduce discriminatory behaviour for

other groups.

Subtypes and individual uniqueness

We might try to break the existing categories into smaller subtypes, or to further divide the subtypes into

units so small that each individual is regarded as unique.

The Common Ingroup Identity model (Gaertner et al., 1993)

`Re-categorization' from a two-group (`us' vs. `them') representation to a one-group representation

Gaertner et al.'s study (1989):

Two minimal groups formed

Two-groups vs. one-group conditions

Participants either sat round a table in a segregated (AAABBB) or integrated (ABABAB) order

Problem

solving exercise requiring either original (segregated) groups decision or aggregated groups

decision

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Social Psychology (PSY403)

Superordinate categorization and

cognitive representation

reduction of bias

Two-group

5 .5

representation

In-group

One-group

4 .5

Out-group

representation

5.5

3 .5

2 .5

1 .5

0 .5

4.5

Segr egated

A ggr egated

Segregated

Integrated

Categorization condition

Comparison between combination & subtype methods

Students first divided into two three-person groups

Both distinct groups displayed ingroup favouritism and prejudice

Introduction

of 2 recategorization manipulations

Persuaded

the students as belonging to one groups (6 people; like summer cave); relevant to combining

different cultures into one "seamless"

Other

method emphasized individual uniqueness

Results

Both types significantly reduced in-group bias

Individual

uniqueness manipulation reduced in-group bias (connection with the self broken)

The

one category manipulation caused students to think more highly of former outgroup members (started

criticizing ingroup; began awarding former outgroup the benefits of kinship)

Applied Social Psychology Lab

Can we design programs that produce healing contact in real-life social groups who dislike each other?

Arranging

equal status, co-operative, intimate, pleasant contact in the pursuit of common goals between

groups that are initially hostile to each other

Common

group identity at work place should be promoted rather than segregation

Media

and government support for promoting equality is highly essential

Reading

· Franzoi, S. (2003). Social Psychology. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Chapter 8.

Other Readings

· Lord, C.G. (1997). Social Psychology. Orlando: Harcourt Brace and Company. Chapter 8.

· David G. Myers, D. G. (2002). Social Psychology (7th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

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