Campus racial harassment provided the context for an experiment, replicated over 3 different campus samples, regarding the effects of social influence on Whites' reactions to racism. Hearing someone condemn racism led Ss to express significantly stronger antiracist opinions than occurred following exposure to a no-influence control condition. Furthermore, hearing someone condone racism led Ss to adopt significantly less strong antiracist positions than when no other opinions were introduced. The robust social influence effects were obtained regardless of whether the source was White or Black or whether Ss responded publicly or privately. A social context approach to interracial settings is discussed.

We conducted two experiments designed to evaluate the effects of normative influence on reactions to racism. The current problem of racism on college campuses provided the context for these studies. We found that exposure to strongly antiracist normative influence induced the expression of more strongly antiracist opinions, regardless of the number of influencing agents and regardless of whether persons expressed their opinions publicly or privately, than occurred following exposure to normative influence reflecting strong acceptance of racism. Overhearing others voice opinions that reflect strong acceptance of racism led persons to express less strongly antiracist opinions than when no influence was exerted.

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The effect of group success and failure upon interpersonal attraction in cooperating interracial groups was investigated in a 2X2X2 factorially designed experiment. The level of participation in the group's decision making (high or low) and race (black or white) served as the additional independent variables. The 56 military subjects exhibited significantly greater attraction for groupmates under the success as opposed to the failure condition (p < .001). No main effects for the race of the group member being evaluated or the level of participation in decision making were obtained, nor were there interactions among any of the three independent variables. Separate analyses of the attraction ratings given the white and the black groupmates further revealed that whatever elevated or depressed the ratings for one, similarly affected the ratings for the other. A general satisfaction-dissatisfaction interpretation is offered to explain the effect of group success-failure on interpersonal attraction. Implications for the scapegoat hypothesis are discussed.Reviews of the literature on interpersonal and attitudinal outcomes of personal contact with representatives of a disliked group make it clear that these outcomes vary widely, sometimes being positive, sometimes negative, and sometimes absent (