Income inequality undermines societies: the more inequality, the more health problems, social tensions, and the lower social mobility, trust, life expectancy. Given people’s tendency to legitimate existing social arrangements, the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) argues that ambivalence—perceiving many groups as either warm or competent, but not both—may help maintain socio-economic disparities. The association between stereotype ambivalence and income inequality in 37 cross-national samples from Europe, the Americas, Oceania, Asia, and Africa investigates how groups’ overall warmth-competence, status-competence, and competition-warmth correlations vary across societies, and whether these variations associate with income inequality (Gini index). More unequal societies report more ambivalent stereotypes, while more equal ones dislike competitive groups and do not necessarily respect them as competent. Unequal societies may need ambivalence for system stability: income inequality compensates groups with partially positive social images.

We assessed evidence for a contextual effect of positive intergroup contact, whereby the effect of intergroup contact between social contexts (the between-level effect) on outgroup prejudice is greater than the effect of individual-level contact within contexts (the within-level effect). Across seven large-scale surveys (five cross-sectional and two longitudinal), using multilevel analyses, we found a reliable contextual effect. This effect was found in multiple countries, operationalizing context at multiple levels (regions, districts, and neighborhoods), and with and without controlling for a range of demographic and context variables. In four studies (three cross-sectional and one longitudinal) we showed that the association between context-level contact and prejudice was largely mediated by more tolerant norms. In social contexts where positive contact with outgroups was more commonplace, norms supported such positive interactions between members of different groups. Thus, positive contact reduces prejudice on a macrolevel, whereby people are influenced by the behavior of others in their social context, not merely on a microscale, via individuals' direct experience of positive contact with outgroup members. These findings reinforce the view that contact has a significant role to play in prejudice reduction, and has great policy potential as a means to improve intergroup relations, because it can simultaneously impact large numbers of people. diversity | trust | social norms | multilevel analysis

We propose that intergroup contact provides an effective means by which to reduce, resolve, and prevent conflict of all kinds, including violent conflict. We review the vast literature on the effectiveness of intergroup contact and discuss when and how it reduces prejudice. We also discuss key features of successful interventions, highlighting examples from conflict zones around the world. Rather than accepting, as some scholars do, that conflict is inevitable, we argue that intergroup contact, in its various forms, can play a pivotal and preemptive role in conflict prevention. We suggest that a blunt application of contact theory, particularly when groups are of unequal status, can have some unfortunate consequences, and contact interventions can, and should, be designed to overcome these pitfalls. We argue that, ultimately, contact is a powerful tool that needs to be used alongside other means of conflict reduction, resolution, and prevention in order to frame sound public policy and build lasting peace.

Over three studies, we identified the phenomenon of ethnic 'resegregation' and assessed the extent to which it was predicted by attributions and norms, among other variables. Study 1, an observational study, showed extensive resegregation between White and Asian students in the cafeteria of a highly mixed school. In Study 2, we found evidence of attributional correspondence for White students, who attributed both their own and the outgroup's contact avoidance more to a lack of interest than fear of rejection, whereas Asian students attributed the outgroup's contact avoidance more to lack of interest, but preferred neither explanation of their own avoidance. In Study 3, we observed a pattern of attributional correspondence among both White and Asian students who attributed both their own and the outgroup's inaction in a hypothetical intergroup cafeteria scenario more to a lack of interest than fear of rejection. Study 3 also demonstrated longitudinally, for both groups, that own lack of interest in the outgroup reduced likelihood of cafeteria contact, whereas having outgroup friends and perceiving positive ingroup norms promoted it. In addition, positive outgroup norms promoted likelihood of cafeteria contact only for Asian students. We discuss how an understanding of the factors driving resegregation is critical to effectively realizing the potential of desegregated settings.

Intergroup contact theory is enjoying a renaissance; positive contact does reduce intergroup prejudice, but intergroup contact has generally been studied in relatively benign settings. With a number of countries either still experiencing or having just emerged from periods of pervasive intergroup animosity, contact theory is, nowadays, being put to its most stringent test as contact theorists try to uncover ways in which intergroup conflict can be reduced and reconciliation fostered. This article draws on research conducted at the Oxford Centre for the Study of Intergroup Conflict in countries including South Africa, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, and Bosnia. We report on our efforts to add to the emerging body of literature by (a) exploring the possible roles that direct and extended contact play in (post-) conflict societies; (b) asking when we might—or might not—expect contact to positively affect more demanding outcomes (such as intergroup trust and forgiveness); and (c) by investigating the processes by which contact achieves these outcomes. We then outline a research program that aims to further study both the benefits and limitations of intergroup contact in societies that are immersed in or emerging from protracted intergroup conflict