ROLE OF GROUP REPRESENTATIVENESS IN THE GENERALIZATION PART OF THE CONTACT HYPOTHESIS

Allport's (1954) contact hypothesis suggested that cooperative contact with a member(s) of a negatively stereotyped social group might (a) a meliorate specific attitudes toward the member(s) interacted with and (b) generalize to less negative general attitudes toward the group as a whole. Previous studies of cooperative contact demonstrated specific attitude change, but few found generalization. We tested the hypothes is that, with specific attitude change held constant, generalization m ight be facilitated by cooperative contact with a member who is repres entative of the group. Participants studied cooperatively with a partn er who claimed to belong to 2 equally negative groups, 1 of which the partner ''represented'' more than he or she did the other. In contrast to control conditions, cooperative contact ameliorated attitudes more for the group the partner represented. In addition to presenting empi rical evidence on how the contact hypothesis works when the contact pe rson belongs to more than 1 negatively stigmatized group, this study s upports previous theoretical suggestions that group representativeness plays a key role in generalizing from positive contact.