Intergroup Contact as One of Many Predictors of Prejudice

Although our central focus is on the effects of intergroup contact, our book would be incomplete if we did not acknowledge the many other variables that relate to prejudice. In his classic volume, The Nature of Prejudice, Gordon Allport made it clear that there existed no “simple and sovereign” theory of prejudice. He writes:

There is no master key. Rather, what we have at our disposal is a ring of keys, each of which opens one gate of understanding…. We may lay down a general law applying to all social phenomena that multiple causation is invariably at work and nowhere is the law more clearly applicable than to prejudice.

(Allport, 1954: pp. 208, 218; italics in the original)