Report Increasing positive intergroup contact Robyn K. Mallett a, * , Timothy D. Wilson b a Loyola University Chicago, Department of Psychology, 1032 W. Sheridan Rd., Chicago, IL 60660-5385, United States b Department of Psychology, P.O. Box 400400, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4400, United States article info Article history: Received 26 August 2009 Revised 6 November 2009 Available online 15 November 2009 Keywords: Intergroup contact Affective forecasting Expectations Friendship abstract We tested an intervention designed to correct negative expectations about inter-racial interactions, increase the positivity of those interactions, and increase inter-racial friendships. In Study 1 (n = 58) White college students watched videotapes depicting an inter-racial friendship and either did or did not write about a similar experience. Participants who wrote about a similar experience expected and actually had a more positive inter-racial interaction. In Study 2 (n = 99) White college students watched videotapes depicting an inter-racial or same-race friendship and either did or did not write about a sim- ilar experience. Those who saw the inter-racial video and wrote about a similar experience had a more positive inter-racial interaction and initiated more inter-racial friendships in the following weeks than participants in the other conditions. Ó 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Introduction Although racial prejudice has decreased in the United States, skin color still matters. When students arrived at school in Jena, Louisiana, in August of 2006, they were greeted by three nooses hanging from the sole tree standing in the school yard. The day be- fore, a Black student had dared to question why only White stu- dents gathered under the shade of the tree during recess. In July of 2009 a swim club in suburban Philadelphia rescinded an agree- ment to let Black and Hispanic kids from a city day camp use the pool, after parents complained. The director of the pool was quoted as saying, ‘‘There is a lot of concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion ... and the atmosphere of the pool” (John-Hall, 2009). The United States Department of Housing and Urban Devel- opment found, as recently as 2000, that Whites were given favor- able treatment over Blacks and Hispanics in the housing market (Turner, Ross, Galster, & Yinger, 2002). Race continues to divide Americans, and it is thus imperative to find ways of reducing prejudice. One of the most effective prejudice reduction techniques is to increase contact between the races under favorable conditions, such as equal status and opportunities for informal interactions (Allport, 1954; Page-Gould, Mendoza-Denton, & Tropp, 2008; Pet- tigrew & Tropp, 2000; Tropp & Pettigrew, 2005). As effective as in- creased contact can be, however, there is a barrier to it in everyday life: people are reluctant to interact with members of other races because they fear that they will be rejected or that the interactions will go poorly (Plant & Devine, 2003; Shelton & Richeson, 2006; Stephan & Stephan, 1985; Vorauer, 2006). People thus avoid oppor- tunities to develop inter-racial friendships — the very kind of con- tact that leads to increased tolerance and reduced prejudice. Ironically, people’s anxiety about inter-racial interactions is of- ten unfounded. We recently demonstrated an intergroup forecasting error, whereby White participants underestimated how positive their interactions with a Black participant would be, because they focused too much on the Black person’s race and too little on what they would have in common with him or her. When we asked White students to think about what they had in common with a Black student their expectations were more accurate. That is, they raised their expectations about how well an interaction with the student would go, and it did go well (Mallett, Wilson, & Gilbert, 2008). Our goal in the present studies was more ambitious. We tested an intervention that was designed not only to improve expecta- tions about an inter-racial interaction, but also to improve the quality of that interaction by making people less nervous about how it would go. Most importantly, we hypothesized that having one unexpectedly positive interaction with a Black person would make Whites more willing to seek out and form friendships with minorities in their everyday lives. The intervention had two parts. First, because research has found that observing a positive interaction between an in-group and out-group member can improve attitudes toward the out- group (Wright, Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe, & Ropp, 1997), we showed White college students videotaped interviews of two students at their university — one White, one Black — who had become friends despite having low expectations about the friendship to begin 0022-1031/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2009.11.006 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: rmallett@luc.edu (R.K. Mallett). Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46 (2010) 382–387 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Experimental Social Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jesp