By Jill Suttie, Photo: from article, Greater Good Magazine, July 17, 2023
There is a long line of research showing that when we make contact with people who are socially different than us, we tend to feel less prejudice towards them. This is known as “the contact hypothesis,” and it has been proposed as a potential remedy for prejudice for decades.
Contact seems to work best for reducing prejudice when the people involved have equal power in a situation or the contact is generally positive, as on a sports team or in friendship situations. But what happens in conflict situations, when the conditions for interpersonal contact may not be ideal? For example, what if you are the victim of ongoing discrimination or you feel threatened in some way by a group of people you see as “the other”? Does the benevolent outcome of contact still hold or are we more apt to revert to prejudice?
A new study aimed to find out.
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