Concept and origins
Allport's (1954) contact hypothesis held that direct intergroup contact under appropriate conditions reduces prejudice. In societies where neighborhoods or schools are segregated, however, there are few opportunities to meet. Wright and colleagues (1997) proposed that simply knowing an ingroup member is friends with an outgroup member could reduce prejudice. In surveys they showed that the more ingroup acquaintances with outgroup friends people had, the lower their prejudice, and in the lab they found that participants who observed an intergroup friendship developed more positive outgroup attitudes.
Mechanisms
Wright and colleagues (1997) proposed several pathways. Because no direct meeting occurs, intergroup anxiety does not arise; an ingroup friend's closeness to the outgroup is read as a norm that mixing with the outgroup is acceptable; and because friends are felt to be part of the self, the outgroup friend is also included in the self through self-expansion. Turner and colleagues (2008) confirmed that reduced anxiety, perceived ingroup and outgroup norms and inclusion of the outgroup in the self mediate the effect. Pettigrew and colleagues (2007) showed in a large German survey that indirect contact reduces prejudice especially through norms.
Interventions and synthesis
Cameron and colleagues (2006) had British primary school children read storybooks about British and refugee children becoming friends, improving attitudes toward refugees. Vezzali and colleagues (2014) reviewed indirect contact research including vicarious contact through books, media and stories and suggested that, along with imagined contact, it can prepare people for direct contact. Zhou and colleagues (2019) meta-analyzed 20 years of research and reported that extended contact is meaningfully associated with reduced prejudice, including independently of direct contact, though effects tend to be smaller than for direct contact.
FAQ
- What is the extended contact hypothesis in simple terms?
- Even if you never meet them yourself, knowing that your friend is close to someone from another group can reduce your prejudice toward that group.
- What are its advantages over direct contact?
- It can be used where direct meetings are rare, and it changes attitudes without the anxiety of a first encounter.
Sources reviewed: 2026-10-26
References
- Allport, G. W. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley. The classic source of the contact hypothesis.
- Wright, S. C., Aron, A., McLaughlin-Volpe, T., & Ropp, S. A. (1997). The extended contact effect: Knowledge of cross-group friendships and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(1), 73–90. The founding paper of the extended contact effect.
- Cameron, L., Rutland, A., Brown, R., & Douch, R. (2006). Changing children's intergroup attitudes toward refugees: Testing different models of extended contact. Child Development, 77(5), 1208–1219. A storybook-based extended contact intervention with children.
- Pettigrew, T. F., Christ, O., Wagner, U., & Stellmacher, J. (2007). Direct and indirect intergroup contact effects on prejudice: A normative interpretation. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 31(4), 411–425. Survey evidence on direct and indirect contact via norms.
- Turner, R. N., Hewstone, M., Voci, A., & Vonofakou, C. (2008). A test of the extended intergroup contact hypothesis: The mediating role of intergroup anxiety, perceived ingroup and outgroup norms, and inclusion of the outgroup in the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(4), 843–860. Tests anxiety, norms and self-inclusion as mediators.
- Vezzali, L., Hewstone, M., Capozza, D., Giovannini, D., & Wölfer, R. (2014). Improving intergroup relations with extended and vicarious forms of indirect contact. European Review of Social Psychology, 25(1), 314–389. A comprehensive review of extended and vicarious contact.
- Zhou, S., Page-Gould, E., Aron, A., Moyer, A., & Hewstone, M. (2019). The extended contact hypothesis: A meta-analysis on 20 years of research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 23(2), 132–160. A meta-analysis of 20 years of extended contact research.