Role of Group Representativeness in the Generalization Part of the Contact Hypothesis

Abstract

Allport's (1954) contact hypothesis suggested that cooperative contact with a member(s) of a negatively stereotyped social group might (a) ameliorate specific attitudes toward the member(s) interacted with and (b) generalize to less negative general attitudes toward the group as a whole. Previous studies of cooperative contact demonstrated specific attitude change, but few found generalization. We tested the hypothesis that, with specific attitude change held constant, generalization might be facilitated by cooperative contact with a member who is representative of the group. Participants studied cooperatively with a partner who claimed to belong to 2 equally negative groups, 1 of which the partner ''represented'' more than he or she did the other. In contrast to control conditions, cooperative contact ameliorated attitudes more for the group the partner represented. In addition to presenting empirical evidence on how the contact hypothesis works when the contact person belongs to more than 1 negatively stigmatized group, this study supports previous theoretical suggestions that group representativeness plays a key role in generalizing from positive contact.