“CONTACT HYPOTHESIS IN ETHNIC

RELATIONS”
Amir seeks to discover the conditions under which intergroup contact leads to improved intergroup
relations. Intergroup contact is commonly believed to reduce prejudice and intergroup tension. Yet there
is also evidence that intergroup contact may have no positive effect on prejudice, or may even exacerbate
tensions. There are a number of variables that shape the contact situation. These variables fall into three
main categories: the character of the contact situation, the character of the contact participants, and the
attitudinal and behavioral results. Mere "sight-seeing" contacts have less tendency to change attitudes.
Contact between individuals of equal status tends to decrease prejudice. Contact with lower status
individuals tends to worsen views of their group. Contact with higher status people tends to improve
one's view of the other group. Casual contact, even if frequent, is less likely to change attitudes than
intimate contact is. Contact is more effective when it has broader institutional support. Individual
personality factors play a role in determining whether contact will improve attitudes toward other.

Contact can simply serve to intensify existing attitudes, both positive and negative. Amir distills seven
general principles from research findings. First, contact does seem effective in producing some sort of
change in the participants' attitudes toward one another. Second, whether that change is positive or
negative depends largely on the contact conditions. Third, contact may produce a change in the intensity,
rather than the direction, of attitudes. Fourth, change in attitude may be limited to a specific aspect of the
other, rather than generalized to the overall view of the other group. Fifth, the preponderance of
favorable finding in the research may result from the selection of particularly favorable conditions for
study. The sixth principle notes that prejudice may be reduced by contact between participants of equal
status. The seventh principle notes that prejudice may be strengthened by competitive contacts,
unpleasant , involuntary or unwelcome contact, contact which disadvantages a participant, contact when
a participant is frustrated, contact with higher status members of the dominant group, or contact when
one group finds the other's moral or ethnic principles objectionable. Amir concludes that "in view of the
above studies, the assumption that contact always lessens conflicts and stresses between ethnic groups
seems naive."