August 19, 2015
Contact
By Jim Tune Gordon Allport was an American psychologist and early groups theorist with a knack for broadly conceptualizing important behavioral topics including religion and prejudice. Allport is said to have used the following conversation to show how group segregation leads to bad attitudes toward the other group. “See that man over there?” “Yes.” “Well, I hate him.” “But you don”t even know him.” “That”s why I hate him.” Allport believed that homogeneity is never harmless. He introduced contact theory as a way of bringing groups together in order to reduce prejudice. The idea is if separation of one
