Invitation to Psychology

372 ChapteR 10 Behavior in Social and Cultural Context

4

Both sides must cooperate, working together for a

common goal. Although contact reduces preju-

dice, it is also true that prejudice reduces contact.

And when groups don’t like each other, forced

contact just makes each side resentful and even

more prejudiced, as a longitudinal field survey

of students in Germany, Belgium, and England

found (Binder et al., 2009). At many multieth-

nic American high schools, ethnic groups form

cliques and gangs, fighting one another and de-

fending their own ways.

To reduce the intergroup tension and com-

petition that exist in many schools, Elliot Aron-

son and his colleagues developed the “jigsaw”

method of building cooperation. Students from

different ethnic groups work together on a task

that is broken up like a jigsaw puzzle; each person

needs to cooperate with the others to put the as-

signment together. Students in such classes, from

elementary school through college, tend to do

better, like their classmates better, and become

less stereotyped and prejudiced in their thinking

than students in traditional classrooms (Aronson,

2000; J. Aronson, 2010; Slavin & Cooper, 1999).

Cooperation and interdependence often reduce

us–them thinking and prejudice by creating an

encompassing social identity—the Eagles and

Rattlers solution.

Each of these four approaches to creating

greater harmony between groups is important, but

none is sufficient on its own. Perhaps one reason

that group conflicts and prejudice are so persistent

is that all four conditions for reducing them are

increases feelings of empathy and trust (Hodson, rarely met at the same time.

2011).

Multiethnic college campuses are living labo-

ratories for testing the contact hypothesis. White

students who have roommates, friends, and roman-

tic relationships across ethnic lines tend to become

less prejudiced and find commonalities (Van Laar,

Levin, & Sidanius, 2008). Cross-group friendships

benefit minorities and reduce their prejudices, too.

Minority students who join ethnic student orga-

nizations tend to develop, over time, not only an

even stronger ethnic identity, but also an increased

sense of victimization. Just like white students who

live in white fraternities and sororities, many come

to feel they have less in common with other ethnic

groups (Sidanius et al., 2004). But a longitudinal

study of black and Latino students at a predomi-

nantly white university found that friendships with

whites increased their feelings of belonging and

reduced their feelings of dissatisfaction with the

school (Mendoza-Denton & Page-Gould, 2008).

(See Figure 10.5.)

Fewer majority

friends

More majority

friends

7

6

5

4

2

3

1

0

Satisfaction

with university

Feeling of

belonging

Figure 10.5 The impact of Cross-ethnic Friend-

ships on Minority Students’ Well-Being

Cross-ethnic friendships benefit members of both

groups. In a longitudinal study of minority black stu-

dents at a predominantly white university, many black

students at first felt left out of school life and thus

dissatisfied with their educational experience. But the

more white friends they made, the higher their sense of

belonging (gold bar) and satisfaction with the university

(blue bar). This finding was particularly significant for

minority students who had initially been the most sen-

sitive to rejection and who had felt the most anxious

and insecure about being in a largely white school. The

study was later replicated with minority Latino students

(Mendoza-Denton & Page-Gould, 2008).

When classrooms are structured so that students of dif-

ferent ethnic groups must cooperate in order to do well

on a lesson, prejudice decreases.