When Groups Meet : The Dynamics of Intergroup Contact

Research and theory on intergroup contact have become one of the fastest advancing and most exciting fields in social psychology in recent years. The work is exciting because it combines basic social psychological concerns -- human interaction, situational influences on behavior -- with an effective means of improving intergroup relations at a time when the world is witnessing widespread intergroup hatred and strife.

This volume provides an overview of this rapidly progressing area of investigation – its origins and early work, its current status and recent developments, along with criticisms of this work and suggestions for future directions. It covers a range of research findings involving contact between groups drawn from the authors’ extensive meta-analysis of 515 published studies on intergroup contact. This meta-analysis, together with the authors’ renowned research on intergroup contact, provides a solid foundation and broad overview of the field, to which have been added discussions of research extensions and emerging directions.

When Groups Meet is a rich, comprehensive overview of classic and contemporary work on intergroup contact, and provides insights into where this work is headed in the future. For research specialists, this volume not only serves as a sourcebook for research and theory on intergroup contact, it also provides the entire 515-item bibliography from the meta-analysis. The clear structure and accessible writing style will also appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in psychology and other social sciences.

Thomas F. Pettigrew is Research Professor of Social Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Since 1956, he has published 400 articles, book chapters, and reviews in addition to sixteen books and monographs. Pettigrew is widely credited with keeping social psychology’s focus on intergroup contact over the past half-century. This research has focused on determining the critical links between the macro (cultural and structural), meso (situational), and micro (individual) levels of social science theory and research – with intergroup contact constituting one of these links. Pettigrew served as president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) and later received the Society’s Kurt Lewin and Distinguished Service Awards and twice its Gordon Allport Intergroup Research Award. In 2002, the Society for Experimental Social Psychology presented him with its Distinguished Scientist Award.

Linda R. Tropp is Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Psychology of Peace and Violence Concentration at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her main research interests concern experiences with intergroup contact among members of minority and majority status groups, identification with social groups, interpretations of intergroup relationships, and responses to prejudice and disadvantage. She is a recipient of the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize for her research on intergroup contact, and she received the McKeachie Early Career Award for the teaching of psychology.