Examples
Competitions are the reasons behind rivalries and fights. Many sports teams, sororities, fraternities, and businesses use the contact hypothesis technique. Having the two groups in competitions do something that requires the groups to work together helps break the rivalries and fights. The groups are given a project to complete, like raising money for a charity or hosting an event. The two groups must be given something that one group cannot complete by itself. This will allow the groups to share a common goal and have equal status and cooperation. The most commonly seen version of contact hypothesis is in the juvenile system. Petty criminals perform community service together to decrease the amount of fights and competition in the system. This also helps the community and the individuals that might have been hurt by the petty criminal.
Once this task is complete it is hypothesized that the groups will find cohesion. The Contact Hypothesis (Allport, 1954), has influenced a broad application of this concept, attributing to the racial desegregation of schools and research on reducing racial, homosexual, age and AIDS based prejudices.
Brown, Brown, Jackson, Sellers, & Manuel (2003) studied predominantly White colleges with athlete teams. There were two expected factors in determining the reaction to Black teammates: the amount of contact with minority teammates and whether the athletes played an individual or team sport. Team sports (soccer, basketball), as opposed to individual sports (track, swimming), require teamwork and cooperation to win. Results from the comparative study showed that team sports more fully meet the conditions that reduce prejudice through intergroup contact. In these conditions, results show that the attitude of those in team sports became more positive as intergroup contact increased while the attitudes of those in individual sports were unaffected by intergroup contact.
Read more about this topic: Contact Hypothesis
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