144 Part 1 Basic Communication ProcessesIntergroup contact theory is one prominent idea for addressing intercul-
tural challenges (Allport, 1954). According to this theory, interaction between
members of different social groups generates a possibility for more positive
attitudes to emerge (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). In other words, if you have
contact with people who are different from you, you have a chance to under-
stand and appreciate them better. Although contact theory has some support,
researchers also find that mindlessly getting people from different groups together
can actually backfire and reinforce cultural stereotypes (Paolini, Harwood, &
Rubin, 2010). This happened in many U.S. cities during the 1970s and 1980s,
when there was a highly controversial effort to racially integrate schools by bus-
ing children to schools on faraway sides of their cities. Even staunch proponents
of the plan admitted that racial tensions became worse, not better (Frum, 2000).
Part of the problem is that when different groups get together we often
engage in behavioral affirmation—seeing or hearing what we want to see or
hear. In other words, if you think teenagers are lazy, then regardless of how hard
your fourteen-year-old cousin studies, you don’t see the effort. Instead, you
notice his eye-rolling or slumped shoulders, so you still perceive him as unmoti-
vated. We may also engage in behavioral confirmation—when we act in a way
that makes our expectations about a group come true (Snyder & Klein, 2005).
Again, if you think your teenage cousin (like all teens) is lazy, you’ll more likely
give him tasks that do not require much effort. When he, in turn, fails to put
in a great deal of effort, you confirm to yourself, “See? I knew he wouldn’t try
very hard.”
So, how do we make successful intergroup interactions more likely? First,
intergroup researchers argue that we must have good-quality contact with out-
group members, because negative contact can increase the perception of dif-
ferences (Paolini, Harwood, & Rubin, 2010). But good contact is not enough,
because it makes it easy to explain away such positive interactions as unique to
the individual or the situation. For example, if you believe that fraternity broth-
ers are simply party boys and you wind up in a study group with a particularly
hardworking member of Phi Sigma Phi, you can mentally create excuses: “Ben is
the exception to the rule.”
Researchers argue that we must have good contact with people we think are
“typical” of their group (Giles, Reid, & Harwood, 2010). If you attended a few
fraternity events and got to see
Ben and several of his broth-
ers more regularly in their fra-
ternity setting, you might learn
that many of them are serious
students and that some of them
aren’t even into the party scene.
We all need to be aware of our
own behaviors and biased per-
ceptions when interacting with
members of other cultures and
groups, so we do not simply con-
firm our existing expectations.GOOD-QUALITY contact
with members of a campus
fraternity could serve to coun-
ter the bias that frat brothers
are nothing more than jocks
and partiers. © Jeff Greenberg/
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