ABSTRACT
Simple solutions to complex problems can often be a mirage. Since the debut of the contact hypothesis put forth by Gordon Allport in 1954, practitioners and laypeople alike have hung on to the seemingly simple promise that, if we could just get people together, we could solve the conflict. Unfortunately, this simple solution is, in fact, a misinterpretation of the contact hypothesis, and it is an overly simplistic approach to an overwhelmingly complex problem. Not surprisingly, just getting people together does not work. Allport (1954) did not argue that contact, in and of itself, would reduce prejudice. On the contrary, he and others (e.g., Amir, 1969; Pettigrew, 1998) recognized that contact under some conditions may actually accentuate hostilities. As is often the case, the interesting question is not whether or not contact reduces intergroup hostility; it is under what conditions contact will reduce intergroup hostility. To answer this question, we also need to ask what the underlying processes are that are responsible for that reduction.
