Contact hypothesis
The second theory is the contact hypothesis ,which states that the best answer to prejudice is to bring together members of different groups so they can learn to appreciate their common experiences and backgrounds.
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.
The contact hypothesis was developed in the middle of the 20th century by researchers who were interested in understanding how conflict and prejudice could be reduced. Studies in the 1940s and 1950s, for example, found that contact with members of other groups was related to lower levels of prejudice. In one study from 1951, researchers looked at how living in segregated or desegregated housing units was related to prejudice and found that, in New York (where housing was desegregated), white study participants reported lower prejudice than white participants in Newark (where housing was still segregated). One of the key early theorists studying the contact hypothesis was Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport, who published the influential book The Nature of Prejudice in 1954. In his book, Allport reviewed previous research on intergroup contact and prejudice. He found that contact reduced prejudice in some instances, but it wasn’t a panacea—there were also cases where intergroup contact made prejudice and conflict worse. In order to account for this, Allport sought to figure out when contact worked to reduce prejudice successfully, and he developed four conditions that have been studied by later researchers.
Allport's Four Conditions- According to Allport, contact between groups is most likely to reduce prejudice if the following four conditions are met:
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The members of the two groups have equal status. Allport believed that contact in which members of one group are treated as subordinate wouldn’t reduce prejudice—and could actually make things worse.
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The members of the two groups have common goals.
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The members of the two groups work cooperatively. Allport wrote, “Only the type of contact that leads people to do things together is likely to result in changed attitudes.”
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There is institutional support for the contact (for example, if group leaders or other authority figures support the contact between groups).
Sources:https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/sociology/race-and-ethnicity/prejudice-and-discrimination