Contact hypothesis

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In psychology and other social sciences, the contact hypothesis suggests that intergroup contact under appropriate conditions can effectively reduce prejudice between majority and minority group members. Following WWII and the desegregation of the military and other public institutions, policymakers and social scientists had turned an eye towards the policy implications of interracial contact. Of them, social psychologist Gordon Allport united early research in this vein under intergroup contact theory.

Contents

In 1954, Allport published The Nature of Prejudice , in which he outlined the most widely cited form of the hypothesis. [1] The premise of Allport's hypothesis states that under appropriate conditions interpersonal contact could be one of the most effective ways to reduce prejudice between majority and minority group members. [1] According to Allport, properly managed contact should reduce issues of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination that commonly occur between rival groups and lead to better intergroup interactions.

In the decades following Allport's book, social scientists expanded and applied the contact hypothesis towards the reduction of prejudice beyond racism, including prejudice towards physically and mentally disabled people, women, and LGBTQ+ people, in hundreds of different studies. [2]

In some subfields of criminology, psychology, and sociology, intergroup contact has been described as one of the best ways to improve relations among groups in conflict. [3] [4] Nonetheless, the effects of intergroup contact vary widely from context to context, and empirical inquiry continues to this day. [5]

History

While Gordon W. Allport is often credited with the development of the contact hypothesis, the idea that interpersonal contact could improve intergroup relations was not a novel one. In the 1930s and 1940s, writers had already begun speculating about the outcomes of interracial contact. [6] [7] [8] In 1947, sociologist R. M. Williams described interpersonal collaboration with goal interdependence as a worthwhile strategy to reduce intergroup hostility. [9]

Following WWII, social scientists examined the effects of desegregation on racial attitudes in the U.S. Merchant Marine, and in desegregated New York City housing projects. [10] [11] In 1951, as national attention turned to issues of desegregation in schools, ultimately leading up to Brown v. Board of Education, Robert Carter and Thurgood Marshall, from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, solicited expert opinions from social science. [12] [13] A range of social scientists, from Kenneth Clark to Floyd and Gordon Allport, weighed in on the psychological effects of desegregation, and conditions under which interracial contact might attenuate racial prejudice, including an amicus curiae brief filed in the Brown v. Board case. [14]

Other studies have claimed that contact hypothesis is very simple and optimistic and that contact would most likely gravitate toward hostility rather than friendship if two competitive parties were involved. If groups with a negative outlook were brought together, it would lead to increases of negative attitudes rather than positive. [15]

Allport situated his formulation of the contact hypothesis in broader discussion of racial diversity—a precursor to interracial proximity and contact. While diversity more generally might foment conflict and prejudice, Allport suggested that contact, under four particular conditions, would facilitate intergroup understanding and consequently reduce prejudice.

Conditions of intergroup contact

In the years prior to Allport’s framing of intergroup contact theory, social scientists had already begun discussing the conditions of intergroup contact that would produce intergroup anxiety, prejudice, or other “detrimental psychological effects”. [16] Wilner, Walkley, & Cook, two years prior to The Nature of Prejudice, studied segregation and integration in housing projects, and also suggested four conditions under which intergroup attitudes would change for the better. Under the assumption that prejudice arises from racial segregation, they suggested that it would diminish when members occupy “the same or equivalent roles in the situation,” share background characteristics like education, age, gender or socioeconomic status, perceive common interests or goals, and when the “social climate […] is not unfavorable to interracial association.” [17]

Concurrently, Carolyn Sherif and Muzafer Sherif developed their Robbers Cave experiment, an illustration of realistic conflict theory. [18] The Sherifs highlighted the importance of superordinate goals and equal status between groups, but notably, did not weigh in alongside other social scientists in their amicus brief for Brown v. Board of Education.

In Allport's own words,

"[Prejudice] may be reduced by equal status contact between majority and minority groups in the pursuit of common goals. The effect is greatly enhanced if this contact is sanctioned by institutional supports (i.e., by law, custom, or local atmosphere), and provided it is of a sort that leads to the perception of common interests and common humanity between members of the two groups."

— Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (1954)

In other words, four conditions under which intergroup contact will reduce prejudice are:

Additionally, Allport specified that within intergroup cooperation, personal interaction, involving informal, personal interaction between group members would scaffold learning about each other and the formation of cross-group friendships. Yet, without these conditions, casual, or superficial, contact would cause people to resort to stereotypes. [1]

The largest meta-analysis of the contact literature suggested that the conditions are facilitating but not essential. [2] However, more recent meta-analysis highlights that many configurations of the conditions have not yet been experimentally tested. [5]

Psychological processes involved in intergroup contact

A number of psychological processes have been hypothesised to explain how and why intergroup contact is able to reduce prejudice and improve intergroup relations. Firstly, Allport (1954) argued that intergroup contact facilitates learning about the outgroup, and this new outgroup knowledge leads to prejudice reduction. [1] Secondly, intergroup contact is believed to reduce the fear and anxiety people have when interacting with the outgroup, which in turn reduces their negative evaluations of the outgroup. [19] Thirdly, intergroup contact is hypothesised to increase people's ability to take the perspective of the outgroup and empathize with their concerns. [20] Empirical research has only found weak support for role of outgroup knowledge in prejudice reduction; however, the affective mechanisms of intergroup anxiety and outgroup empathy have accumulated extensive empirical support. [21]

The reduction of prejudice through intergroup contact can be described as the reconceptualization of group categories. Allport (1954) claimed that prejudice is a direct result of generalizations and oversimplifications made about an entire group of people based on incomplete or mistaken information. The basic rationale is that prejudice may be reduced as one learns more about a category of people. [1] Rothbart and John (1985) describe belief change through contact as "an example of the general cognitive process by which attributes of category members modify category attributes" (p. 82). [22] An individual's beliefs can be modified by that person coming into contact with a culturally distinct category member and subsequently modifying or elaborating the beliefs about the category as a whole.

However, contact fails to cure conflict when contact situations create anxiety for those who take part. Contact situations need to be long enough to allow this anxiety to decrease and for the members of the conflicting groups to feel comfortable with one another.[ citation needed ] Additionally if the members of the two groups use this contact situation to trade insults, argue with each other, resort to physical violence, and discriminate against each other, then contact should not be expected to reduce conflict between groups. To obtain beneficial effects, the situation must include positive contact.

Effects of intergroup contact

Social scientists have documented positive effects of intergroup contact across field, experimental, and correlational studies, across a variety of contact situations, and between various social groups. Pettigrew and Tropp's canonical 2006 meta-analysis of 515 separate studies found general support for the contact hypothesis. [2] Furthermore, their analysis found that face-to-face contact between group members significantly reduced prejudice; the more contact groups had, the less prejudice group members reported. [2] Moreover, the beneficial effects of intergroup contact were significantly greater when the contact situation was structured to include Allport's facilitating conditions for optimal contact. [2]

Examples

Intergroup contact and prejudice towards African Americans

The majority of intergroup contact research has focused on reducing prejudice towards African Americans. For example, in one study, Brown, Brown, Jackson, Sellers, and Manuel (2003) investigated the amount of contact white athletes had with black teammates and whether the athletes played an individual or team sport. Team sports (e.g., football or basketball), as opposed to individual sports (e.g., track or swimming), require teamwork and cooperative interactions to win. Results showed that White athletes who played team sports reported less prejudice than athletes who played individual sports. [23]

Intergroup contact and prejudice towards homosexuality

The contact hypothesis has proven to be highly effective in alleviating prejudice directed toward homosexuals. [24] Applying the contact hypothesis to heterosexuals and homosexuals, Herek (1987) found that college students who had pleasant interactions with a homosexual tend to generalize from that experience and accept homosexuals as a group. [25] Herek and Glunt's (1993) national study of interpersonal contact and heterosexuals' attitudes toward gay men found that increased contact "predicted attitudes toward gay men better than did any other demographic or social psychological variable" (p. 239); such variables included gender, race, age, education, geographic residence, marital status, number of children, religion and political ideology. [26] Herek and Capitanio (1996) found that contact experiences with two or three homosexuals are associated with more favorable attitudes than are contact experiences with only one individual. [27]

Intergroup contact and prejudice towards Muslims in Europe

Savelkoul et al. (2011) in their study from the Netherlands found people living in regions with high numbers of Muslims (i.e. those more exposed to unavoidable intergroup contacts) get used to and are more experienced with their integration and express lesser perceived threats. In addition, they also found that higher contacts with Muslim colleagues directly reduce anti-Muslim attitudes. [28] Similarly, Novotny and Polonsky (2011) in their survey among Czech and Slovak university students documented that personal contacts with Muslims and experience with visiting an Islamic country associate with more positive attitudes towards Muslims. [29] However Agirdag et al. (2012) report that Belgian teachers working in schools that enroll a larger share of Muslim students have more negative attitudes toward Muslim students than other teachers. [30]

Intergroup contact with immigrant groups within the United States

Daniel J. Hopkins presented the idea that local conditions within a community or in other words changes in local immigrant demographics can affect the attitudes of people on immigrants. This can include the stereotyping of immigrants and/or a development of pro or anti-immigrant ideas. These attitudes may be shaped by experiences the non-immigrant population has with the immigrant population. He believes that this idea is not necessarily universal but that certain conditions play a role on the development of attitudes. [31]

Intergroup contact and social robots

Evidence suggests that intergroup contact theory may be applicable to social robots. Exposure to a social robot under predictable, controlled conditions can lead people to feel more positive toward that specific robot than they previously felt toward robots in general. [32] Additionally, research has shown that even imagining interacting with a robot can reduce negative feelings. [33]

Indirect intergroup contact

One of the most important advances in research on intergroup contact is the growing evidence for a number of indirect, non-face-to-face intergroup contact strategies as a means to improve relations between social groups. [34] While the benefits of direct intergroup contact have been empirically established, its implementation is often not practical. For example, in many countries, racial and religious groups are often residentially, educationally or occupationally segregated, which limits the opportunity for direct contact. However, even when the opportunity for direct intergroup contact is high, anxiety and fear can produce a negative or hostile contact experience or lead to the avoidance of the contact situation altogether.

Indirect forms of intergroup contact include:

Extended contact

The extended contact hypothesis, established by Wright and colleagues in 1997, posits that knowing that a member of one's own group has a close relationship with a member of an outgroup can lead to more positive attitudes towards that outgroup. Correlational research has demonstrated that individuals who report knowledge that an ingroup member has an outgroup friend typically report more positive outgroup attitudes, while experimental research has shown that providing ingroup members with this information creates the same positive effect. [35]

In the 20 years since its proposal, the extended contact hypothesis has guided over 100 studies, that generally find support for the positive effect of extended contact on prejudice reduction, independent of direct friendship with outgroup members. [36] [37]

Parasocial contact

In a similar vein, vicarious contact involves simply observing an ingroup member interact with an outgroup member. [38] For example, positive media portrayals of intergroup interactions on television and radio, also known as the parasocial contact hypothesis, have the potential to reduce the prejudice of millions of viewers and listeners. [39]

Imagined contact

The imagined contact hypothesis was put forward by Richard J. Crisp and Rhiannon Turner (2009) [40] and proposes that simply imagining a positive encounter with a member or members of an outgroup category can promote more positive intergroup attitudes. It also proposed that imagined contact can lead to a greater desire to have social contact between groups and can help improve explicit or implicit biases toward marginalized or minority groups, such as those who are mentally or physically disabled, religious minorities, ethnic minorities, and sexual minorities. [41] [42]

Electronic- or E-contact

Fiona White and her colleagues (2012; 2014) recently developed Electronic- or E-contact. E-contact involves an ingroup member interacting with an outgroup member over the Internet [43] [44] and includes text-based, video-based or a mixture of both text- and video-based online interactions. Electronic contact has been empirically shown to reduce inter-religious prejudice between Christian and Muslim students in Australia in both the short [45] and long term, [46] as well between Catholic and Protestant students in Northern Ireland. [47] In the context of sexual prejudice, research also has shown that interacting online with a member of the outgroup is particularly useful as a prejudice-reduction strategy among individuals who typically report ideologically intolerant beliefs. [48] Additionally, in the context of mental health stigma, participants who experienced a brief interaction with a person diagnosed with schizophrenia reported reduced fear, anger, and stereotyping toward people with schizophrenia in general compared to a control condition. [49]

In the Latin American context, recently Rodriguez-Rivas et al. (2021) demonstrated a positive impact on the reduction of stigma towards people with mental illness in Chilean university students, following participation in a multi-component online program that incorporated electronic contact (E-contact) via videoconferencing with a person diagnosed with schizophrenia. [50]

In the Afghanistan context, recently Sahab et al. (2024) studied whether using an AI-powered software agent as a facilitator for intergroup electronic contact led to better interactions and reduced prejudice between rival ethnic groups. The findings suggest that using an AI-assisted chatbot in intergroup E-contact can enhance interaction and reduce interethnic prejudices and hostility among Afghanistan’s ethnic groups. [51]

Criticisms

While large bodies of research have been devoted to examining intergroup contact, social scientific reviews of the literature frequently voice skepticism about the likelihood of contact's optimal conditions occurring in concert, and by extension, about the generalizability of correlational research and lab studies on contact. [52]

Null findings and gaps in research

Though the general findings of intergroup contact research have inspired promise, Bertrand and Duflo (2017) find that observational correlations between intergroup contact and non-prejudiced behavior can be explained by self-selection: less prejudiced people seek out contact. [53] Comparatively, fewer controlled experimental studies of intergroup contact exist; of those that do, few measure prejudice outcomes longer than one day after treatment, leaving a gap in the literature that investigates the long-term effects of contact. Furthermore, of these experiments, none measure the reduction of racial prejudice in people over the age of 25. [5] Similarly, in a report to the United Kingdom Equality and Human Rights Commission, Dominic Abrams highlights "a dearth of good-quality longitudinal research on prejudice or prejudice reduction”. [54]

Gordon Allport himself suggested that in light of increasing racial contact in the United States, "the more contact the more trouble", unless scaffolded by the four facilitating conditions he proposed, distinguishing casual contact and "true acquaintance" or "knowledge-giving contact". [1] In political science, Allport's work is often juxtaposed with V.O. Key's examination of Southern politics, which found that racism grew in areas where the local concentrations of black Americans were higher. [55] In that context, absent the specific conditions of Allport, contact comes to produce more negative effects, namely increasing prejudice. Some social psychologists have converged with political scientists on this position. [56] Daniel J. Hopkins presented the idea that local conditions within a community (specifically changes in local immigrant demographics) can affect the attitudes of people on immigrants. This can include the stereotyping of immigrants and/or a development of pro or anti-immigrant ideas. These attitudes may be shaped by experiences the non-immigrant population has with the immigrant population. He believes that this idea is not necessarily universal but that certain conditions play a role on the development of attitudes. [57] Agirdag et al. (2012) report that Belgian teachers working in schools that enroll a larger share of Muslim students have more negative attitudes toward Muslim students than other teachers. [58] Other studies have claimed that contact hypothesis is a very simple and optimistic and that contact would most likely gravitate toward hostility rather than friendship if two competitive parties were involved. If groups with a negative outlook were brought together, it would lead to increases of negative attitudes rather than positive. [59] Furthermore, ideologies when not motivated by prejudices or negative contacts and attitudes, such as ethnic nationalism, the professed religion or the political standings, do not simply change with greater contact. For example, ecumenism or political collaboration virtually does not operate any religious dogmatic or political ideal or principle change in any of the two rival sides.

Negative contact hypothesis

Stefania Paolini, Jake Harwood, and Mark Rubin (2010) proposed that intergroup contact may have more negative than positive effects on prejudice, because it makes outgroup members' social group more salient during encounters. [60] Recent evidence suggests that although negative intergroup contact is more influential than positive intergroup contact, it is also less common than positive contact in real world intergroup encounters, in five central European countries. [61] [62] Recent research also suggests that people's past experiences with out-group members moderates contact: people who have had positive experiences with out-group members in the past show a smaller discrepancy between the effects of positive and negative contact. [63]

Negative sentiments triggered by proximity are also described as NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard). [64]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prejudice</span> Attitudes based on preconceived categories

Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's perceived personal characteristics, such as political affiliation, sex, gender, gender identity, beliefs, values, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race, ethnicity, language, nationality, culture, complexion, beauty, height, body weight, occupation, wealth, education, criminality, sport-team affiliation, music tastes or other perceived characteristics.

Group dynamics is a system of behaviors and psychological processes occurring within a social group, or between social groups. The study of group dynamics can be useful in understanding decision-making behaviour, tracking the spread of diseases in society, creating effective therapy techniques, and following the emergence and popularity of new ideas and technologies. These applications of the field are studied in psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, epidemiology, education, social work, leadership studies, business and managerial studies, as well as communication studies.

In sociology, allophilia is having a positive attitude towards outgroup members. The outgroup members can be anyone who possesses characteristics that are different from one's own, such as people of different races, religions, cultures, etc. It is a framework for understanding effective intergroup leadership and is conceptualized as a measurable state of mind with tangible consequences.

In social psychology, superordinate goals are goals that are worth completing but require two or more social groups to cooperatively achieve. The idea was proposed by social psychologist Muzafer Sherif in his experiments on intergroup relations, run in the 1940s and 1950s, as a way of reducing conflict between competing groups. Sherif's idea was to downplay the two separate group identities and encourage the two groups to think of themselves as one larger, superordinate group. This approach has been applied in many contexts to reduce intergroup conflict, including in classrooms and business organizations. However, it has also been critiqued by other social psychologists who have proposed competing theories of intergroup conflict, such as contact theory and social categorization theory.

Social identity is the portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group.

Realistic conflict theory (RCT), also known as realistic group conflict theory (RGCT), is a social psychological model of intergroup conflict. The theory explains how intergroup hostility can arise as a result of conflicting goals and competition over limited resources, and it also offers an explanation for the feelings of prejudice and discrimination toward the outgroup that accompany the intergroup hostility. Groups may be in competition for a real or perceived scarcity of resources such as money, political power, military protection, or social status.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stereotype</span> Generalized but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing

In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example, an expectation about the group's personality, preferences, appearance or ability. Stereotypes are often overgeneralized, inaccurate, and resistant to new information. A stereotype does not necessarily need to be a negative assumption. They may be positive, neutral, or negative.

Ambivalent prejudice is a social psychological theory that states that, when people become aware that they have conflicting beliefs about an outgroup, they experience an unpleasant mental feeling generally referred to as cognitive dissonance. These feelings are brought about because the individual on one hand believes in humanitarian virtues such as helping those in need, but on the other hand also believes in individualistic virtues such as working hard to improve one's life.

The imagined contact hypothesis is an extension of the contact hypothesis, a theoretical proposition centred on the psychology of prejudice and prejudice reduction. It was originally developed by Richard J. Crisp and Rhiannon N. Turner and proposes that the mental simulation, or imagining, of a positive social interaction with an outgroup member can lead to increased positive attitudes, greater desire for social contact, and improved group dynamics. Empirical evidence supporting the imagined contact hypothesis demonstrates its effectiveness at improving explicit and implicit attitudes towards and intergroup relations with a wide variety of stigmatized groups including religious minorities, the mentally ill, ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, and obese individuals. Researchers have identified a number of factors that influence the effectiveness of the imagined contact hypothesis including vividness of the imagery and how typical the imagined outgroup individual is. While some researchers question the effectiveness of the imagined contact hypothesis, empirical evidence does suggest it is effective at improving attitudes towards outgroups.

Intergroup anxiety is the social phenomenon identified by Walter and Cookie Stephan in 1985 that describes the ambiguous feelings of discomfort or anxiety when interacting with members of other groups. Such emotions also constitute intergroup anxiety when one is merely anticipating interaction with members of an outgroup. Expectations that interactions with foreign members of outgroups will result in an aversive experience is believed to be the cause of intergroup anxiety, with an affected individual being anxious or unsure about a number of issues. Methods of reducing intergroup anxiety and stress including facilitating positive intergroup contact.

The common ingroup identity model is a theoretical model proposed by Samuel L. Gaertner and John F. Dovidio that outlines the processes through which intergroup bias may be reduced. Intergroup bias is a preference for one's in-group over the out-group. Derived from the social identity approach to intergroup behaviour, the common ingroup identity model is rooted in the process of social categorization, or how people conceive of group boundaries. The model describes how intergroup bias can be reduced if members of different groups can be induced to conceive of themselves to be part of the same group, then they would develop more positive attitudes of the former outgroup members. An individual will change the way they view the out-group through a social categorization process called recategorization where former out-group members become incorporated into individual's representations of the in-group.

There is a great deal of research on the factors that lead to the formation of prejudiced attitudes and beliefs. There is also a lot of research on the consequences of holding prejudiced beliefs and being the target of such beliefs. It is true that advances have been made in understanding the nature of prejudice. A consensus on how to end prejudice has yet to be established, but there are a number of scientifically examined strategies that have been developed in attempt to solve this social issue.

Integrated threat theory (ITT), also known as intergroup threat theory, is a theory in psychology and sociology which attempts to describe the components of perceived threat that lead to prejudice between social groups. The theory applies to any social group that may feel threatened in some way, whether or not that social group is a majority or minority group in their society. This theory deals with perceived threat rather than actual threat. Perceived threat includes all of the threats that members of group believe they are experiencing, regardless of whether those threats actually exist. For example, people may feel their economic well-being is threatened by an outgroup stealing their jobs even if, in reality, the outgroup has no effect on their job opportunities. Still, their perception that their job security is under threat can increase their levels of prejudice against the outgroup. Thus, even false alarms about threat still have "real consequence" for prejudice between groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Group threat theory</span>

Group threat theory, also known as group position theory, is a sociological theory that proposes the larger the size of an outgroup, the more the corresponding ingroup perceives it to threaten its own interests, resulting in the ingroup members having more negative attitudes toward the outgroup. It is based on the work of Herbert Blumer and Hubert M. Blalock Jr. in the 1950s and 1960s, and has since been supported by multiple studies. Other studies have not found support for the theory. Its predictions are contrary to those of the contact hypothesis, which posits that greater proximity between racial/ethnic groups under appropriate conditions can effectively reduce prejudice between majority and minority group members.

Intergroup relations refers to interactions between individuals in different social groups, and to interactions taking place between the groups themselves collectively. It has long been a subject of research in social psychology, political psychology, and organizational behavior.

In social psychology, a metastereotype is a stereotype that members of one group have about the way in which they are stereotypically viewed by members of another group. In other words, it is a stereotype about a stereotype. They have been shown to have adverse effects on individuals that hold them, including on their levels of anxiety in interracial conversations. Meta-stereotypes held by African Americans regarding the stereotypes White Americans have about them have been found to be largely both negative and accurate. People portray meta-stereotypes of their ingroup more positively when talking to a member of an outgroup than to a fellow member of their ingroup.

Diversity ideology refers to individual beliefs regarding the nature of intergroup relations and how to improve them in culturally diverse societies. A large amount of scientific literature in social psychology studies diversity ideologies as prejudice reduction strategies, most commonly in the context of racial groups and interracial interactions. In research studies on the effects of diversity ideology, social psychologists have either examined endorsement of a diversity ideology as individual difference or used situational priming designs to activate the mindset of a particular diversity ideology. It is consistently shown that diversity ideologies influence how individuals perceive, judge and treat cultural outgroup members. Different diversity ideologies are associated with distinct effects on intergroup relations, such as stereotyping and prejudice, intergroup equality, and intergroup interactions from the perspectives of both majority and minority group members. Beyond intergroup consequences, diversity ideology also has implications on individual outcomes, such as whether people are open to cultural fusion and foreign ideas, which in turn predict creativity.

In social psychology, social projection is the psychological process through which an individual expects behaviors or attitudes of others to be similar to their own. Social projection occurs between individuals as well as across ingroup and outgroup contexts in a variety of domains. Research has shown that aspects of social categorization affect the extent to which social projection occurs. Cognitive and motivational approaches have been used to understand the psychological underpinnings of social projection as a phenomenon. Cognitive approaches emphasize social projection as a heuristic, while motivational approaches contextualize social projection as a means to feel connected to others. In contemporary research on social projection, researchers work to further distinguish between the effects of social projection and self-stereotyping on the individual’s perception of others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fiona A. White</span> Australian psychologist

Fiona A. White is an Australian academic. She is a professor of social psychology at the University of Sydney, Australia, and director of the Sydney University Psychology of Intergroup Relations (SUPIR) Lab., and degree coordinator of the Bachelor of Liberal Arts and Science (BLAS). She has been a lead author on four editions of Developmental Psychology: From Infancy to Adulthood. White is known as the developer of the E-contact intervention, a synchronous online tool that has been found to reduce anxiety, prejudice, and stigma.

In psychology and media studies, the parasocial contact hypothesis is that positive portrayals of minority groups in mass media can reduce prejudice in a manner similar to that predicted by the contact hypothesis in social psychology.

References

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