Intergroup Contact and the Promotion of Intergroup Harmony: The Influence of Intergroup Emotions

Intergroup contact cannot be considered only in terms of its cognitive processes (Johnston & Hewstone, 1990; Pettigrew, 1998); a deeper understanding requires recognition of the role of affective processes. Fortunately, recent advances in social psychology, particularly in the area of affect research, now allow researchers to view intergroup relations in general, and intergroup contact in particular, within a new framework which encompasses both cognition and affect (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002; Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000). It is now recognized that affect plays a more significant role in the formation of intergroup judgments than was once believed (Esses & Dovidio, 2002). Our research on intergroup contact is part of and fosters this emerging interest in affect, and shows that affect plays an equally important role in changing intergroup judgments. We aim in this chapter to identify the qualities of this cultural climate in the literature on both intergroup relations and contact, and to point out the existence of a growing body of evidence about intergroup contact that is compatible with a new process of prejudice reduction, a process that we call "affect generalization". Hence, after providing a brief overview of the major contributions to the historical development of research on intergroup emotions, we discuss models and evidence that are consistent with this affect-driven process of prejudice reduction and we suggest new directions to explore more consistently the affective underpinnings of contact effects and intergroup relations.