The American psychologist, Gordon Allport, in his book ‘the nature of prejudice, 1954’.

He
considered all factors related to prejudice but came to the conclusion that stereotypical
categorisation is present historically throughout all types of cultures. He put forward ‘the least effort
principle’ to explain this, suggesting that all human brains use stereotyping as a normal cognitive
function to process information; a kind of mental shortcut to understand the world.
An example to try and explain this principle is one of a job position, and the selection process that
determines who will fill that role. A manager will be making judgements about job applications
based on a limited number of factors under time constraints (resumes, references, interviews). Short
of giving every candidate a trial period in the position – using up valuable money, business resources
and time- there is no way of guaranteeing the best person is chosen. So how does the manager
decide? Allport’s least effort principle is used, and assumptions are made about each candidate,
using the limited information that the manager has been presented with (how candidate was
dressed, how punctual). If candidate was scruffy the manager might assume they were disorganised,
and if they were late might assume they had bad time keeping skills. These assumptions are
stereotyped perceptions, based on preconceived ideas rather than on fact. (Scruffy candidate could
be organised or be late for reasons out of his control). In the case of the job applications,
stereotypes ‘fill in the gaps’ and enable the manager to make a decision without using valuable
business resources. Although stereotyping is used by the brain to reach conclusions, it is often not a
reasonable or accurate way to form an opinion. Allport therefore theorised that stereotypes were
the foundation of prejudice which was in turn the primary cause of discrimination.

Contact hypothesis

The proposition that interaction among people belonging to different groups will reduce intergroup
prejudice. Research indicates that the prejudice-alleviating effects of contact are robust across many
situations, but that they are strengthened when the people from the different groups are of equal
status, are not in competition with each other, and do not readily categorize the others as very
different from themselves. Also called intergroup-contact hypothesis. Allport’s (1954) contact
hypothesis proposed that simple contact between groups would not be sufficient to improve
intergroup relations. Rather, for contact between groups to reduce prejudice, certain prerequisite
conditions must be in place.

In particular, Allport held that reduced prejudice will result when four features of the contact
situation are present:

Equal status: Allport stressed equal group status within the situation. It is important that both
groups expect and perceive equal status in the situation (Cohen & Lotan, 1995). Thus, Jackman &
Crane (1986) show negative effects from contact with outgroup members of lower status.

Common goals: Prejudice reduction through contact requires an active, goal-oriented effort. Athletic
teams furnish a prime example (Miracle 1981). In striving to win, interracial teams need each other
to achieve their goal. Goal attainment, such as a winning season, furthers this process.

Intergroup cooperation: Attainment of common goals must be an interdependent effort without

intergroup competition. Sherif (1966) demonstrated this principle vividly in his Robbers’ Cave field
study.

Support of authorities, law or custom: With explicit social sanction, intergroup contact is more
readily accepted and has more positive effects. Authority support establishes norms of acceptance
For decades, researchers and practitioners have speculated about the potential for intergroup
contact to reduce intergroup prejudice. Some writers thought contact between the races under
conditions of equality would only breed “suspicion, fear, resentment, disturbance, and at times open
conflict” (Baker, 1934, p. 120). Others proposed that interracial experiences could lead to “mutual
understanding and regard” (Lett, 1945) and that when groups “are isolated from one another,
prejudice and conflict grow like a disease” (Watson, 1946).

Early studies of intergroup contact provided preliminary tests of these proposals and revealed
encouraging trends. After the U.S. Merchant Marine began desegregating, Brophy (1946) found that
the more voyages the White seamen took with Blacks, the more positive their racial attitudes
became. Likewise, White police officers who worked with Black colleagues later objected less to
having Blacks join their police districts, teaming with a Black partner, and taking orders from Black
officers (Kephart, 1957).

Field studies of public housing provided the strongest evidence and marked the introduction of
large-scale field research into North American social psychology. In a notable example of this work,
Deutsch and Collins (1951) interviewed White housewives across different public housing projects
with a design that Campbell and Stanley (1963) later labelled “quasi-experimental.” Two housing
projects in Newark assigned Black and White residents to separate buildings. Two comparable
housing projects in New York City desegregated residents by making apartment assignments
irrespective of race or personal preference. The authors found that White women in the
desegregated projects had far more optimal contact with their Black neighbours. Moreover, they
held their Black neighbours in higher esteem and expressed greater support for interracial housing.

Sherif summer camp study (1954/1961)

Realistic Conflict Theory is a good example of how negative attitudes and behaviours arise between
groups due to competition over limited resources (Yzerbyt & Demoulin, 2010) as demonstrated in
this experiment. The experimenters took two groups of 11- and 12-year-old boys (the kids gave
themselves the group names the "Rattlers" and the "Eagles") to what they thought was a summer
camp. For the first week (stage 1), the two groups of boys were separated and did not know about
each other. During this time, the boys bonded with the other boys in their group. Then, they were
introduced to each other (stage 2), and immediately the name calling began. To see if conflict would
increase, the experimenters created competitions between the groups and the conflict which
included hostility, derogation, and aggressive behaviour toward the other groups did increase as
predicted (Yzerbyt & Demoulin, 2010).

In the third week (stage 3), the experimenters created conditions that required both groups to work
together solving a common problem. One example was the drinking water problem. The kids were
under the impression that their drinking water was cut off possibly due to vandals. Both groups
worked together to solve the problem. By the end of stage 3 (when the groups worked together on
tasks), the group member's outgroup choices (friends from the other group) increased significantly.
In the years since this experiment, it has been demonstrated that working intergroup socialization is
one of the most effective ways to reduce outgroup prejudice and discrimination.

The events at Robbers Cave mimicked the kinds of conflict that plague people all over the world. The
simplest explanation for this conflict is competition. Assign strangers to groups, throw the groups
into competition, stir the pot, and soon there is conflict. There is a lot of evidence that when people
compete for scarce resources (e.g. jobs, land etc.) there is a rise in hostility between groups. For
example, in times of high unemployment there may be high levels of racism among white people
who believe that black people (or asylum seekers) have taken their jobs. The study was a field
experiment which means it has high ecological validity. However, the Robbers Cave study has been
criticized on a number of issues. For example, the two groups of boys in the study were artificial, as
was the competition, and did not necessarily reflect real life. For example, middle class boys
randomly assigned into two separate groups is not rival inner-city gangs, or rival football supporters.
Ethical issues must also be considered. The participants were deceived, as they did not know the
true aim of the study. Also, participants were not protected from physical and psychological harm.
Nor should the results be generalized to real life because the research used only 12-year-old white
middle class boys and excluded, for example, girls and adults. The sample was biased.

One of the most serious limitations is that participants in cooperative contact programmes do not
necessarily generalize their positive attitudes and perceptions. Even if they do come to view one or a
small number of individuals from the other group more positively, they may not generalize beyond
the specific situation in which the positive contact took place, and they may not generalize from
specific contact partners to the group as a whole (Hewstone & Brown, 1986).

A meta-analysis by Pettigrew and Tropp 2006, showed a highly significant relationship between
contact and prejudice with results clearly indicating that intergroup contact typically reduces
intergroup prejudice. Results from our analysis also show that intergroup contact effects typically
generalize beyond participants in the immediate contact situation. Not only do attitudes toward the
immediate participants usually become more favourable, but so do attitudes toward the entire
outgroup, outgroup members in other situations, and even outgroups not involved in the contact.
This result enhances the potential of intergroup contact to be a practical, applied means of
improving intergroup relations.

Imagined contact theory (Turner and Crisp, 2010)

Research on imagined contact considers whether it is even necessary to know in- group members
who have friends in the out-group in order for contact to exert a positive effect. Specifically, we have
argued that imagining an intergroup interaction may have positive effects consonant (although
perhaps less pronounced) with the benefits of actual intergroup contact (see Crisp & Turner, in
press; Turner, Crisp, & Lambert, 2007). There are several reasons to expect this to be the case.
Mental imagery has been found to elicit similar emotional and motivational responses as the real
experience (Dadds et al 1997) and neuropsychological studies have shown that it shares the same
neurological basis as perception (Kosslyn et al, 2001). More specifically within social psychology,
research has found that after imagining a (counter-stereotypic) strong woman, participants
demonstrated less implicit stereotypes than participants who engaged in neutral or stereotypic
mental imagery (imagining a weak woman or a strong man), or participants who had not engaged in
any imagery (Blair, Ma, & Lenton, 2001).

Turner and Crisp, 2010 study in two studies we have shown, for the first time, that imagining
intergroup contact can reduce implicit prejudice. In Study 1, participants who imagined contact with
an elderly person showed less implicit bias in favour of the young over the elderly compared to
participants in the control condition. In Study 2, non-Muslim participants who imagined contact with
a Muslim stranger showed significantly less implicit bias in favour of non- Muslims over Muslims
compared to participants in a control condition who simply thought about Muslims as a group.

The current findings have several important implications. The fact that imagined contact influences
not only explicit out-group attitudes and perceived out-group variability (Turner, Crisp et al., 2007)
but also implicit out-group attitudes suggests that imagined contact can have diverse benefits for
intergroup relations. Given that implicit attitudes are less easy to change than explicit out-group
attitudes (Wilson et al., 2000), these findings suggest that imagined contact is a powerful
intervention to reduce prejudice. Our findings also provide further evidence that imagined contact
has similar consequences to direct intergroup contact. imagined contact has two distinct advantages
over direct contact. First, it may be particularly useful in contexts where intergroup conflict and
segregation are high and the opportunity for contact is low as, like with extended contact, an
individual does not need to know personally an out-group member. Second, imagined contact holds
a further advantage over both direct and extended contact. Although extended contact can be
implemented more widely than direct contact, because an individual only needs to know of an in-
group member who has experienced out-group contact, imagined contact goes one step further: no
experience of out-group contact, either direct or extended, is necessary to observe improved out-
group attitudes. In sum, imagined contact may have a less powerful effect than direct contact, but it
can be used as an intervention in contexts where direct contact, and even extended contact, cannot
and begin to pave the way to more positive intergroup relations.

Extended contact

Wright et al. (1997) argued that extended contact – the mere knowledge that in-group members
have friends in the out-group – can reduce prejudice. When an out-group member is observed being
friendly and positive to in-group members, expectations about intergroup interactions may be more
positive, while seeing an in-group member showing tolerance towards the out-group may have a
positive influence on the attitudes of other in- group members. The positive relationship between
extended contact and out-group attitude has been shown in a number of studies, using cross-
sectional (Turner, Hewstone et al., 2007; Wright et al., 1997and experimental methodologies (wright
et al, 1997).

Extended contact has a distinct advantage over direct, face-to-face contact. Direct contact can only
be used as an intervention to reduce prejudice when group members have the opportunity for
contact in the first place (e.g. Phinney, Ferguson, & Tate, 1997; Turner, Hewstone et al., 2007).
Unfortunately, however, there are many examples of opposing groups that have few such
opportunities (e.g. Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland; Israelis and Palestinians in the
Middle East). Extended contact, on the other hand, may be especially useful in situations where
there is less opportunity for contact, as it implies that actual experience of contact with out-groups
is not a necessary component of contact interventions. The importance of this basic idea for policy
makers and educators seeking to develop interventions designed to change out-group attitudes
cannot be understated because it suggests that contact may be a far more powerful and flexible
means of improving intergroup relations than previously thought.

Criticism of contact theory

However, other reviews reach more mixed conclusions. Amir (1969, 1976) conceded that contact
under optimal conditions tends to reduce prejudice among participants, but he stressed that these
reductions in prejudice may not generalize to entire outgroups. Moreover, Amir (1976) noted that
contact under unfavourable conditions “may increase prejudice and intergroup tension”. Likewise,
Forbes (1997), a political scientist, concluded that intergroup contact often lowers prejudice at the
individual level of analysis but fails to do so at the group level of analysis. Hence, he argued that
contact can cure individual prejudice but not group conflict. Stephan (1987) acknowledged that
intergroup contact has the potential to reduce prejudice, but he emphasized the complexity
involved in the link between intergroup contact and prejudice. For example, characteristics of the
contact setting, the groups under study, and the individuals involved may all contribute to enhancing
or inhibiting contact’s effects (Pettigrew, 1998).

While multiple studies have demonstrated the overall positive effects of imagining contact on
intergroup attitudes and intergroup behaviour, there is some debate about the theoretical
importance and application of the imagined contact hypothesis. Some researchers criticized the
imagined contact hypothesis as too rooted in the microlevel and laboratory setting, with it unable to
address macrolevel social problems of intergroup conflict such as genocide and mass murder.
Furthermore, there is criticism that imagining contact is not effective for minorities regarding
attitudes and behavioural intentions towards majority group members, particularly if the minority
group has experienced high levels of oppression and violence at the hands of the majority group.
Lastly, some have critiqued the small effects, potential for demand characteristics to influence
results, and short duration of effects.

Results from the meta-analysis conclusively show that intergroup contact can promote reductions in
intergroup prejudice. Moreover, the meta-analytic findings reveal that contact theory applies
beyond racial and ethnic groups to embrace other types of groups as well