The utility of Allport's conditions of intergroup contact for predicting perceptions of improved racial attitudes and beliefs - Contact Hypothesis

Journal of Social Issues, Winter, 1998 by Michele Andrisin Wittig, Sheila Grant-Thompson

Practitioners' Explicit and Implicit Theories of How Prejudice Reduction Programs Work

Program evaluation theorists (e.g., Chen, 1990) assert that a theoretical frame of reference is crucial to program evaluation. Such a framework consists of specifying a program's goals, the ways in which the program is implemented, and anticipated connections between the goals, program implementation, and the predicted program benefits (Harrell, 1996). For example, programs whose objective is to effect attitude change are based on one or more implicit theories about how the program changes participants' attitudes. Mika (1996) suggests that program evaluators need to make such theories explicit prior to conducting a program evaluation. Our purpose in the following sections is to show the utility of examining prejudice reduction program leaders' theories about how such programs reduce prejudice.

Brief Description of the RAP Program

The Southern California Racial Awareness Program (RAP) is a school-based intervention designed to reduce racial, ethnic, and other forms of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination and to promote affirmation of the equal worth of distinct groups. (RAP is a fictitious name for this program.) The RAP program encompasses three components that may influence various dimensions of prejudice reduction: (1) information to combat racial stereotypes (to influence the cognitive dimension); (2) experiential learning that encourages affective, not merely intellectual involvement (to influence the affective dimension); and (3) taking action to achieve racial equality (to influence the behavioral dimension).

College student volunteers attend a one-day, six-hour training session prior to leading a series of eight weekly one-hour discussions among students in middle and high school classrooms, using a RAP curriculum guide. Training is conducted on several college and university campuses in Los Angeles County during late September for fall placement, and during late February for winter/spring placement. Typically, facilitators work in pairs to co-lead the classroom discussions during regular class sessions, in the presence of the credentialed classroom teacher. The RAP curriculum is designed to engage middle and high school students in discussions (with each other and with the college student facilitators) dealing with the concept of race; its inadequacy as a source of information about human diversity; the concepts of ethnic and cultural identity and their meanings to various groups; and the impact that race has on us as individuals, on various social groups, and on civic life. The concluding lesson encourages students to consider the equal human worth of all peoples and to move past mere tolerance toward "understanding, acceptance, and even celebration of diversity" (Sauceda, Guillean, & McKenna, 1997).

Implicit and Explicit Theories Underlying the RAP Program

During the initial phase of the program evaluation, the evaluation team studied the nature and scope of the existing RAP program and conducted a review of extant literature on prejudice reduction. This information suggested that the RAP program targets individual prejudicial attitude change, using a group process that fosters conditions that Allport (1954/1979) and Cook (1985) proposed as necessary for successful intergroup contact. Specifically, the RAP group process