ABSTRACT
Prejudice and ways to challenge it are a prominent topic in social psychology. There has been a long discussion about whether contact with members of groups that are prejudiced against is likely to ameliorate or deteriorate intergroup relations (e.g. Amir, 1976; Jackson, 1993). In the seminal work The Nature of Prejudice, Allport (1954) defined conditions under which contact with out-group members was likely to decrease prejudice. Fifty years later, a large meta-analysis by Pettigrew and Tropp (2006) brought convincing evidence that intergroup contact typically reduces prejudice, to some extent independently of the conditions present in the contact situation. Pettigrew and Tropp’s meta-analysis not only summarized key findings from past research but also identified gaps in the existing literature (see also Hewstone & Swart, 2011). The most serious limitation of all is the predominant focus on the effects of positive contact-at the expense of negative intergroup contact. This means that contemporary understanding of the role of intergroup contact in intergroup relations has long been biased towards its positive factors and its positive consequences.
