Author:

Keywords:

Social Sciences, Psychology, Social, Psychology, intergroup relations, prejudice/stereotyping, values, culture/ethnicity, power, social interaction, MINORITY, MAJORITY, DETERMINANTS, VALUES, 1701 Psychology, 5201 Applied and developmental psychology, 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology, 5205 Social and personality psychology

Abstract:

Across cultures, intergroup contact – positive interpersonal interaction with out-group members – was found to reduce prejudice. Contact research was criticized, however, for bypassing intergroup (in)equality in the wider society. We propose a cultural psychology approach grounding people’s contact experiences in culturally afforded ways of relating to out-groups. Extending Allport’s (1954) equal-status hypothesis to the culture level we hypothesized that contact would be most effective in egalitarian cultures and less effective in more hierarchical cultures. To test this hypothesis, we revisited Pettigrew and Tropp’s (2005, 2006) influential meta-analysis of contact studies and augmented it with culture-level measures of equality and hierarchy values. Our meta-analysis of intergroup contact and prejudice in 660 original samples across 36 cultures confirmed that egalitarianism predicted more effective contact. Cultural hierarchy values and social-dominance orientation attenuated contact effects. Cultures of (in)equality made a difference over and above equal status in the contact situation.