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LIT-1413: A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory

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Properties7
StatusActive — read 2026-10-29 (NOTE-1407) in full, from the published article's PDF on a University of Pennsylvania Wharton site (https://ideas.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Pettigrew-Tropp.pdf); worth reading as the meta-analysis of 515 studies (713 samples) that established a reliable negative association between face-to-face intergroup contact and prejudice (r ≈ −.21, −.34 in experiments) and showed Allport's conditions to enhance it without being needed. Read it knowing that most of its samples are cross-sectional surveys of reported contact, that one of its six publication-bias checks (Vevea and Hedges) leaves no significant overall effect, and that the larger effects of rigorous designs come from non-racial targets: for racial and ethnic samples experiments give −.22, the overall mean.
Version3
Tagssocial-science, moral-psychology
ExtendsLIT-1408 — Intergroup Contact Theory
Cited as “compared against” byLIT-1420 — The Contact Hypothesis Re-evaluated
Cited as “extends” byLIT-1405 — How Does Intergroup Contact Reduce Prejudice? Meta-Analytic Tests of Three Mediators
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1407 — Pettigrew and Tropp — A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory

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Pettigrew, T. F. and Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 751–783. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.90.5.751.

Read in full on 2026-10-29 (NOTE-1407).

Why this is here

The exchange widened the Franklin effect to groups: contact between members of different groups works like the favour, an encounter that comes before the revised view of the other. It cited this meta-analysis for 515 studies and 713 samples, contact typically reducing prejudice and generalizing to the group. The abstract agrees on all three. The exchange did not mention what the abstract also says, that Allport’s conditions are facilitating, not essential, which bears on how much the encounter itself does. Bears on CLAIM-275 and, as a coupling of interpretation and conduct between groups, on CLAIM-297 and CLAIM-330.

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