ABSTRACT
The notion that intergroup contact can improve intergroup relations is a deceptively simple idea with strong intuitive appeal. Indeed, this basic notion became a fundamental cornerstone of twentieth-century policymaking, at least in principle, as the world’s economies and interests became increasingly intertwined and co-dependent. Explicit contact goals are now formally enshrined in our most important international agreements. For instance, in the wake of World War II the newly-formed UNESCO constitution famously declared that:
since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed; that ignorance of each other’s ways and lives has been a common cause, throughout the history of mankind, of that suspicion and mistrust between peoples of the world through which their differences have all too often broken into war.
(Besterman, 1951, p. 113)