Hewstone

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. (Harper Lee, To Kill a Mocking Bird, 1960, p. 35) What are the processes that drive any change of attitude that contact is able to effect? To answer this kind of question, mediational analyses are essential. In this section I review the progress that has been made in pursuit of mediating variables within the framework of the original Hewston-Brown model and its later revisions (Brown and Hewstone, 2005; Hewstone, 1996). One of the major additions to this literature since Allport’s (1954) pioneering work has been the study of mediating variables. Indeed, with all the benefits of hindsight and a discipline that has matured theoretically, empirically and methodologically, it is striking how little Allport seemed concerned with ‘how’ or ‘why’ contact works effectively. To the extent that he asked these questions at all, Allport envisaged contact working by improving knowledge about the outgroup. However, subsequent research points to rather meagre effects of this variable (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2006; Stephan and Stephan, 1984). In fact, rather than factual information per se being important, more recent research has emphasised the importance of knowing about differences between groups (Wolsko, Park, Judd, and Wittenbrink, 2000), which is theoretically much closer to the conception of ‘awareness of group differences’ as a moderator of contact effects, which is central to the model we have developed. Scholars have suggested several variables that could potentially mediate between contact and outcomes (Dovidio, Gaertner, and Kawakami, 09 Hewstone 1686 13/11/09 13:51 Page 256 2003; Kenworthy, Turner, Hewstone, and Voci, 2005; Pettigrew, 1998). I will not review development in all these areas here but will, instead, highlight the main mediators identified in research to date, again focusing on the results of our own research programme. In current work, affective factors are now considered to be particularly important (Pettigrew, 1998), that is, the emotions that are associated with members of other groups, and the feelings experienced during intergroup interaction. Affective processes seem to play a greater role in the contact process than do cognitive factors (Pettigrew, 1998; Pettigrew and Tropp, 2008). Pettigrew’s emphasis on affective factors comes out of his conviction that ‘the contact situation must provide the participants with the opportunity to become friends’ (Pettigrew, 1998, p. 76). Friendship, Pettigrew argues, can both reduce negative affect and augment positive affect.

            Miles Hewstone