Racial and Ethnic Status Distinctions and Discrimination: The Effects of Prior Contact and Group Interaction

Status Characteristics

Status characteristics are attributes from which individuals form beliefs and expectations about a person’s abilities and include characteristics such as gender, race, occupation, or age (Berger et al. 1977; Berger and Webster 2006; Berger, Rosenholtz, and Zelditch 1980). Status characteristics are one of two types, diffuse or specific. Diffuse status characteristics, such as race and gender, are characteristics associated with cultural beliefs (for example, stereotypes) about a broad range of abilities (Berger, Cohen, and Zelditch 1972; Correll and Ridgeway 2003; Berger and Webster 2006). Specific status characteristics refer to particular abilities used to infer performance for a specific type of task. For example, algebraic or verbal ability would be considered a particular task ability that would result in a specific status. When individuals are differentiated based on status characteristics, those with higher status have greater power and prestige within the group (Berger and Webster 2006). That is, all else equal, when status characteristics are differentiated, individuals of higher status (such as men or White people) are given, and take, more influence during interactions with those of lower status (such as women or Black people).

When specific status characteristics become salient, individuals use those characteristics as accurate and relevant indicators of abilities and performance and also generalize from these specific status characteristics to other task settings (Berger et al. 1977; Freese 1976). In the absence of specific information about individuals’ abilities on a task, the burden of proof is placed on low-status individuals to prove their diffuse status is not relevant and demonstrate their abilities (Berger et al. 1977). The burden of proof process demonstrates how diffuse status characteristics, which are not initially relevant to the task, come to organize performance expectations and small group interactions. Specifically, the burden of proof process occurs in three steps: the recognition and differentiation of various status characteristics, an inference about general competence, and interactional behaviors that follow a status hierarchy. The process advantages high-status actors who are given greater opportunities to contribute to the task, have more influence, and are evaluated more positively (Berger et al. 1977).

Status Beliefs

The effect of individuals’ status markers on group interactions occurs as a result of status beliefs (Correll and Ridgeway 2003). As Cecilia Ridgeway and Hazel Markus (2022, this issue) detail, cultural schemas based on historically contingent and changeable contexts dictate status beliefs about categories of people. Both the societal and group context are important for the distribution of status. These status beliefs then affect the allocation of status based on perceived competence, which in turn enables the distribution of influence within groups, both large and small. Thus, in nearly all aspects of life, individuals’ identities (such as gender and race) affect the way they are treated.

Status differences are neither stable nor natural. Instead, they develop through repeated social interactions that attach performance expectations to social categories.² One way status beliefs can develop is from initial conditions of unequal resources distributed among two or more nominal categories (Ridgeway 1991). These unequal conditions create an association between the resources and characteristics that, over time and with repeated interaction, inform performance expectations.

For example, because of a number of laws and policies enacted by White individuals to maintain positions of power (Delgado and Stefancic 2001), White Americans are more likely than Black Americans to have greater resources such as wealth, education, and employment (Killewald and Bryan 2018; Kozol 2005; Pager and Shepherd 2008; Quillian, Lee, and Honoré 2020). Similarly, and for the same reasons, compared to Mexican Americans, White Americans have higher employment rates (Pager, Western, and Bonikowski 2009), have better educational opportunities (Valencia and Black 2002; Lopez 2005), and are less likely to receive unjust treatment by police, prosecutors, and immigration authorities (Short and Magaña 2002; Esqueda, Espinoza, and Culhane 2008; Welch et al. 2011; Fussell 2014). Therefore, when individuals interact with Black, Mexican American, and White people, they are more likely to encounter White individuals who are more resourced than their Black and Mexican American counterparts. Belief systems regarding this relative disadvantage or advantage are developed and, over time, favorable expectations of White individuals (and less favorable expectations of Black and Mexican American individuals) are stabilized.

Summary and Hypotheses

In summary, the burden of proof process enables status characteristics to organize behavior in small group interactions, with higher-status individuals having more influence than their lower-status counterparts. In our study, we examine race and ethnicity, which are considered diffuse status characteristics. Specifically, we consider interactions between Black and White and Mexican American and White individuals in small, task-oriented groups. At this point in the United States, White individuals are considered to be higher status than Black and Mexican American individuals. To further meet the scope conditions of SC-EST, we consider groups whose members are interdependent and cooperating to achieve task success.

Prediction A: If there is no intervention, race-ethnicity will act as a diffuse status characteristic.

 H1a: Without an intervention, White participants will view Black and Mexican American group members as less competent than other White group members.

 H2a: Without an intervention, Black and Mexican American participants will view themselves as less competent than White group members.

 H3a: Without an intervention, Black and Mexican American group members will be less influential than White group members.

Inconsistent Complexity Intervention

The first intervention we consider is the inconsistent complexity intervention, which interrupts status-generalizing processes. As described earlier, the status-generalizing process, as described by SC-EST, demonstrates how group members use information about each other and about the task to allocate influence in group interactions. For example, if group members know only each other’s diffuse status characteristics, then diffuse status characteristics will organize group interaction. Thus, if group members are not told otherwise, the burden of proof process enables a generalization from the diffuse status characteristics to perceived competence (Berger et al. 1977; Goar and Sell 2005).

The inconsistent complexity intervention builds on the work of Elizabeth Cohen (1982, 1993; Cohen and Lotan 1997) and Hamit Fişek (1991). Specifically, by causing group members to consider how different people might have different skills, Cohen and Fişek posit that different types of tasks could interrupt the burden of proof process and status inequality. Carla Goar and Jane Sell (2005) modify the formulation in several ways; in particular, by considering the definition of the task rather than the task itself. Specifically, by defining the tasks as requiring many kinds of abilities, the intervention challenges narrow definitions of competence. If tasks are composed of many components and those components are not necessarily consistent in evaluation (that is, not all high or all low in evaluation) or even related to each other, then overall labels such as smart or competent do not apply. Therefore, by defining the task as requiring many different abilities, group members are more likely to listen to each other thereby increasing opportunities for participation from all group members (for a graph theoretical explanation before intervention, see the appendix).

The inconsistent complexity intervention has been effective in two studies involving race. In the first, when tasks were defined as requiring multiple skills that might not be related to each other, interaction between Black and White group members was more equitable (Goar and Sell 2005). In the second, we (Manago, Sell, and Goar 2019) examined the effectiveness of the inconsistent complexity intervention over a three-week period in groups of Mexican American and White participants. Each week, the groups worked on a different task. Although some tasks demonstrated stronger effects than others, the researchers found that the intervention can be sustained over time (Manago, Sell, and Goar 2019).³

Summary and Hypotheses

Although higher-status individuals are perceived to be more competent and have more influence than their lower-status counterparts, these status positions are not fixed. Instead, we posit that the inconsistent complexity intervention can decrease status differentials in small, interdependent, task-oriented groups. Therefore, we predict:

Prediction B: Given the inconsistent complexity intervention, race-ethnicity will not act as a diffuse status characteristic.

 H1b: With an intervention, White participants will not view Black and Mexican American group members as less competent than other White group members.

 H2b: With an intervention, Black and Mexican American group members will not view themselves as less competent than their White group members.

 H3b: With an intervention, Black and Mexican American group members will not be less influential than White group members.

Intergroup Contact Theory

The second intervention is intergroup contact, which includes interactions (broadly defined) with people who differ from oneself in terms of race-ethnicity, religion, and so on (Pettigrew et al. 2011). Several studies and metanalyses confirm the general result that those individuals with more intergroup contact demonstrate less prejudice. Although prejudice is broadly defined and measured (Lolliot et al. 2015), contact is consistently associated with decreased prejudice. For example, contact has been shown to decrease negative attitudes (such as stereotypes), affect (such as fear, anger, disgust), and behavioral intentions or actual behavior (such as avoidance, desired social distance; Zhou et al. 2019; Stephan 2014).

Despite considerable research showing an association between contact and discrimination, some researchers criticize the contact literature for the lack of studies that measure actual (versus intended) behavior (Beelmann and Heinemann 2014) and that use random assignment (Paluck and Green 2009; Paluck et al. 2021). The lack of behavioral research and random assignment poses challenges for evaluating the causal effect of contact. For example, some recent field experiments in which participants were randomly assigned to different team compositions demonstrated effects for some—but not all—attitudinal and behavioral measures of prejudice and discrimination measures (Mousa 2020; Scacco and Warren 2018). In particular, behavioral measures showed stronger effects than attitudinal measures.⁴

Cognitive Stereotypes

Despite these concerns, there is considerable research that supports the association between contact and (lower) prejudice (Kotzur and Wagner 2021; Pettigrew et al. 2011; Pettigrew and Tropp 2006). Further, this research uses multiple measures of prejudice and discrimination—including a wide variety of stereotypes. Prior contact is consistently associated with decreased negative and increased positive stereotypes. Competence is a fundamental dimension of stereotypes, meaning that all other stereotypes are influenced by perceptions of competence (along with warmth) (Fiske et al. 2002; Brambilla, Ravenna, and Hewstone 2012). In addition to being a fundamental stereotype, competence is also thought to be associated with deference. Specifically, and as noted by SC-EST, individuals tend to defer to those whom they perceive to be more competent.

Generalizability of Contact

When considering the effect of contact on prejudice, researchers have sought to examine whether contact generalizes. That is, are interactions with a specific out-group member viewed as separate from the rest of the out-group, or does generalization from contact extend to the out-group in general? Research indicates that generalization does occur, not only beyond specific individuals, but also beyond specific out-groups. For example, friendship with an out-group member, the most intimate and effectual form of contact, appears to reduce prejudice not only toward that person and other members of that person’s out-group, but also to members of different out-groups (Pettigrew 2008; Laar et al. 2005; Pettigrew 1997).

ICT research typically focuses on how contact with specific out-group members generalizes to an entire out-group. In this study, we ask whether attitudes toward out-group members as a whole can also generalize to specific out-group members in groups that are assigned rather than chosen by group members. Our interest in this question stems from research which consistently finds that small group interactions can reflect, reinforce, or challenge larger structural inequalities (Benard et al. 2022; Berger and Webster 2018; Ridgeway 2019; Ridgeway and Markus 2022, this issue). We posit that if small group interactions are microcosms of structural processes, and contact reduces prejudice toward an out-group as a whole, then contact should also decrease prejudice toward specific members of that out-group.⁵

Summary and Hypotheses

Contact is associated with more positive stereotypes of out-group members. Competence is a fundamental dimension of stereotypes and is also associated with deferential behavior. Contact is thought to generalize from specific individuals to broader out-group members. Research has not examined whether this process occurs in the other direction, but we suspect these may be parallel processes. Therefore, we predict:

Prediction C: Greater frequency of past contact with out-groups will be related to more positive estimates of competence and increased deference to out-group members within the task groups.

 H4a: For White participants, higher frequency of prior contact with out-group members (Black and Mexican American participants) will be associated with increased perceptions of competence of specific out-group members.

 H4b: For White participants, higher frequency of prior contact with out-group members (Black and Mexican American participants) will be associated with increased deference toward specific out-group members.

Affective Stereotypes

In addition to improving cognitive stereotypes (such as perceptions of competence of out-group members), ICT emphasizes that past contact with out-group members is associated with improved affective attitudes toward out-group members. Two such measures of affective attitudes are willingness to interact with out-group members and negative emotion (specifically, in-group anxiety) toward out-group members.

Because contact has been shown to reduce prejudice toward out-group members, researchers are often interested in understanding ways to increase willingness for such contact (Zhou et al. 2019). Put differently, do people who are less prejudiced interact with people from other racial-ethnic groups more often, or does interacting with those from other groups lead to less prejudice? Studies indicate that both seem to be the case (Pettigrew et al. 2011). As an example, a particularly compelling, multicountry, longitudinal research project finds that existing contact leads to less prejudice, and less prejudice leads to a greater willingness for future contact (Binder et al. 2009).

Contact may reduce prejudice, at least in part, by decreasing intergroup anxiety, i.e., the negative emotion felt when anticipating future, or experiencing actual, encounters with out-group members (Brown and Hewstone 2005; Stephan and Stephan 1985). When individuals have high intergroup anxiety associated with a specific out-group, they tend to hold more negative stereotypes of, have more negative affect toward, and desire more social distance from members of that out-group (Stephan 2014). Thus, contact is a well-established predictor of intergroup anxiety (Zhou et al. 2019; Pettigrew and Tropp 2008).

Summary and Hypotheses

Prior contact is associated with a greater willingness for future contact and lower intergroup anxiety. Lower intergroup anxiety is associated with a greater willingness for future contact. Therefore, we predict:

Prediction D: Past contact will predict intergroup anxiety and willingness for future interaction.

 H5a: Past contact with out-group members will be associated with higher willingness to have future contact with specific out-group members within the group.

 H5b: Past contact with out-group members will be associated with lower reported intergroup anxiety toward out-group members.

 H5c: Intergroup anxiety will mediate the effect between past contact and willingness for future contact with specific out-group members within the group.

Although research suggests that intergroup anxiety will mediate the relationship between contact and willingness to interact in the future; we do not expect that intergroup anxiety will mediate the relationship between contact and competence. This is because, although intergroup anxiety may improve affective prejudice, such as willingness to interact, researchers do not suggest that intergroup anxiety will affect cognitive prejudice, such as stereotypes, to the same degree (Pettigrew et al. 2011, 203).

Discrimination by and Against Whom

Research in intergroup contact has primarily focused on decreasing prejudice of historically advantaged group members (those with more power) rather than historically excluded members (those with less power). It may be that this stance was initially developed because researchers focused on decreasing discrimination from the more powerful toward those with less power. Status and discrimination processes, however, are created and recreated in interactions. For example, research suggests that not only do historically advantaged individuals view themselves as more competent than historically excluded individuals, but also that historically excluded individuals perceive themselves to be less competent than historically advantaged group members (Ridgeway 2019).

When research examines the effect of contact on prejudice for both advantaged and excluded groups, it finds that the effects for decreasing the prejudice toward historically disadvantaged groups are stronger than decreasing prejudice toward those who are historically advantaged (Tropp 2007; Tropp and Pettigrew 2005). Additionally, some research finds that intergroup anxiety does not mediate the relationship between contact and prejudice toward those who are historically advantaged. One potential reason for the weaker effect may be the valence of contact (Hayward et al. 2017).

Specifically, evidence indicates that it is not only the presence of contact but also the type of contact, positive or negative, that affects prejudicial attitudes (Hayward et al. 2017; Schäfer et al. 2021). Further, negative contact is weighted more heavily than positive intergroup contact (Barlow et al. 2012; Paolini et al. 2014; Pettigrew and Tropp 2008). Notably, members of both historically advantaged and excluded groups respond similarly both in terms of the high impact of negative contact and the general effect of the positive intergroup contact. It might be, however, that historically excluded group members have more negative contact with out-group members than their historically advantaged counterparts. Therefore, when examining the effect of contact on discrimination, we consider these processes separately for individuals of historically advantaged and excluded social groups.

Sample

Participants were recruited from the student population at two large, public universities. To control for other status characteristics (such as gender and education) all participants were women and undergraduate students. Based on power analyses, we aimed for at least twenty-five groups per condition. Given the two conditions (experimental and control) and three participants per group, we recruited a minimum of 150 participants per experiment. Sign-up rates varied, leaving 180 participants in the Midwest (thirty groups per condition) and 150 participants in the Southwest (twenty-five groups per condition). Participants were assigned to groups of three based on individuals’ reported availability (such as available to meet on Tuesdays). Each group consisted of two White participants and one participant who was either Black or Mexican American. Then, groups were randomly assigned to one of two conditions—experimental and control.

Design

Each study (Midwest and Southwest) consisted of three sessions, each separated by about a week. Participants worked in the same group on three different tasks that shared common features. Specifically, each task provided a vignette that described how the group had become stranded in a particular environment (session 1, on the moon; session 2, at sea; session 3, in the desert). Group members were then provided with a list of twelve to fifteen salvaged items that might aid in survival and asked to rank the items first as individuals and then as a group, from most to least important. Groups were also prompted to provide reasons for why each item was ranked as it was, thereby creating a high degree of group interaction.

The manipulation was implemented in the first session (see procedure). Each session was jointly administered by two researchers, one of whom was White and the other who was either Black or Mexican American. The researchers were both active in their instructions to the group. In this manuscript, we consider only the last session, session 3. We examine session 3 because during this session, we also administered the questionnaires addressing contact, intergroup anxiety, and willingness to interact with the same group in the future. In the next section, we describe session 1 because it is when we administered the manipulation.

Procedure

Session 1 began with participants individually reading and signing consent forms in separate cubicles. Next, to ensure that participants were aware of their group members’ race-ethnicity, we asked them to complete an information sheet about their group members. To assist in filling out the information sheet, participants were given a copy of the completed recruitment form for themselves and the other group members. The recruitment form contained a limited amount of information about each person, but included their racial-ethnic identity, their gender identity, and their name.

After completing the forms, participants watched an instructional video that described the study and included the experimental manipulation. After the recorded instructions, participants worked individually on each session’s (survival) task for seven minutes in separate cubicles. At the end of the seven minutes a timer sounded, and at the direction of a researcher, the group was brought to a common table to work on the same task collectively. To control for any effects of table position on status, before the study began the researcher placed completed nametags on the table, thereby ensuring that the woman from the historically excluded group (either the Black or Mexican American group member) was always in the same position (at the right side of the table). Participants worked on the task collectively for twenty minutes and their interactions were recorded. At the end of the twenty minutes, a timer once again sounded. A researcher turned off the video camera and asked participants to fill out a questionnaire. The questionnaire required participants to recall the instructions they had received, as well as indicate their estimations about the performance of individual members and the group (as a whole). After completing the questionnaire, participants were paid $20 for their participation and scheduled for future sessions. Participants were told that at the end of the three sessions, their group could qualify in an additional cash bonus if their group performance was high. In fact, all groups received the same bonus.

Sessions 2 and 3 involved the same group members, working on similar tasks, first alone and then as a group. All sessions lasted between forty-five minutes and one hour. The only differences are that, unlike in session 1, participants in sessions 2 and 3 were not asked to complete a consent form again or rewatch the instructional video. Additionally, in session 3, participants were asked to complete additional questionnaires (which included our measures of contact, intergroup anxiety, and willingness for future interaction).

Experimental Manipulation

The experimental manipulation (independent variable) was the definition of the task, as described in the instructional video during session 1. The video also instantiated the scope conditions for SC-EST. That is, in all cases, the task was presented as a cooperative task and as one on which people did better when they worked together.⁶ A White female professor presented information to the participants. In all conditions, she described the tasks on which the participants would be working and told participants that the studies investigated how people made decisions under differing conditions. Additionally, groups in both conditions were briefed generally about teamwork, and told, “During the past several years, there have been many studies about how different people work together in groups. For many types of problems, the results have shown that individuals working together perform more effectively than individuals working alone. This is true for ALL three of the tasks that we will be asking you to work on.”

At this point, the instructions varied, depending upon whether the condition was the baseline condition or the experimental (inconsistent complexity) condition.

Groups in the baseline condition were told that some individuals perform better than others: “This task today and the other tasks you will work on during the second and third group meeting are similar: We DO know that some people do better at these tasks than other people. Even though some people do better while others do worse, we are trying to find out what makes some groups more successful than other groups at tasks like these.”

Later in the video these instructions were reinforced, with baseline groups told that “After the twenty minutes allotted for the group task has passed, we will give you a short questionnaire to fill out. This questionnaire will ask you to assess quality of the answers your group provided and more specifically the quality of answers offered by individual group members.”

Groups in the experimental condition received the inconsistent complexity intervention, which created a different definition of the task: “The task today and the other tasks you will work on during the second and third group meeting involves using MANY, MANY different skills and abilities. We know that, generally speaking, some group members will have some special skills and abilities and others will have other skills and abilities. So, although everybody will have some ability to contribute to the task, it would be extremely unusual or even impossible for a single individual to be good at every single aspect necessary for these tasks.”

These instructions were similarly reinforced later in the video, and experimental groups were told that “After the twenty minutes allotted for the group task has passed, we will give you a short questionnaire to fill out. This questionnaire will ask you to assess the kinds of abilities you think are associated with success at the tasks and, more specifically, the abilities of the different group members.”

After receiving the intervention, only in the first week, participants filled out a questionnaire. This questionnaire was used to ensure the participants were paying attention to the instructions. In subsequent weeks, participants simply completed the task and filled out a questionnaire after the task. That is, the intervention occurred only in the first week.

Manipulation Checks

After the video in the first week, participants completed a questionnaire that asked about scope conditions. First, the questionnaires ensured that participants knew that group members had different racial or ethnic, but not gender, identities. If a single group member did not accurately assess the other group members’ race-ethnicity, the entire group was omitted from the final sample.⁷ Second, the questionnaires ensured that team members were task focused and group oriented. In the Black-White and Mexican American–White studies, 82 percent and 91 percent (respectively) of participants disagreed with the statement that “All answers are equally correct.” Respectively, 95 percent and 100 percent disagreed with the statement that “People do better on the task when they work only individually.” Participants thus overwhelmingly met the scope conditions.⁸

The questionnaires also evaluated the salience of the inconsistent complexity (experimental) manipulation. As would be expected, in both studies, those in the control condition were more likely than those in the experimental condition to answer “true” to the statement, “Some people just seem to do better, overall, than others at the task” ( = 60.543, p < 0.001; = 51.458, p < .001). Similarly, as would be expected, in both studies, participants in the experimental condition were more likely than those in the control condition to answer “true” to the statement that “There are many different abilities and skills important for the task; nobody seems to be good at everything” ( = 33.206, p < .001; = 28.57, p < .001). Thus the manipulations appeared to work in both studies.⁹

Contact

We use a well-established measure (Pettigrew and Tropp 2006) of how much contact participants had with Mexican American, Black, and White people. Contact measures are sometimes criticized because they are self-reported and are therefore subject to social desirability biases; however, research that specifically investigates the relationship between observer ratings and self-ratings of contact finds that, overall, self-reports are valid measures of contact (Hewstone, Judd, and Sharp 2011). For our measure, we asked participants how frequently they had done the following things with people of a different race-ethnicity: talk on the phone with, confide in, lend something to, and so on. Responses ranged from 1 (never) to 5 (frequently). For each participant, we averaged the nonmissing items.¹⁰

Intergroup Anxiety

Using a measure from Walter Stephan and Cookie Stephan (1985), we measure intergroup anxiety by asking participants what “feelings or emotions” they might feel “when you interact with a ____ person” where the blank is filled with a race or an ethnicity, in our study, Mexican American, Black, or White. The emotions include things such as confident, suspicious, and threatened, and participants could choose a number ranging between 1 (not at all) and 7 (very much) (Stephan and Stephan 1985). All items were coded so that higher numbers indicate more intergroup anxiety. We then averaged the items.

Willingness for Future Contact

Willingness to have future contact with specific out-group members was measured using two questions, both of which were measured on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The questions were “In the future, I would be willing to work with my group again.” and “In the future, I would choose to work with another group over working with the same group I worked with today.” The questions were combined into one measure by subtracting the desire to leave variable from the desire to stay variable and dividing it by two. The final variable ranges from –1 to 2, higher numbers indicating greater willingness to interact with the same group in the future.

Competence Assessments

To measure the participants’ perceptions of their group members’ competence, participants were asked to evaluate each group member. Specifically, participants were told, “How would you rate [team member] in terms of their performance on the tasks?” Choices ranged from 0 (extremely incompetent) to 10 (extremely competent).

Deference

As mentioned, participants first ranked items in order of importance for survival in the scenario. The group then met and discussed how they should order the items to present as their collective opinion. The difference between participants’ original opinions and their final group decision is a measure of deference given to others in the group (Berger et al. 1992; Berger, Cohen, and Zelditch 1972). The greater the difference between the individual’s ranking and the final group ranking, the greater the individuals’ deference. To measure our questions of interest appropriately, we used these measures of deference in two ways.

First, within each group, we examined each group members’ deference and ranked them from least deferential (most influential) to most deferential (least influential). In the case of a tie for most or least influential, the tied group members were put in the same position. For example, if two group members deferred twenty and one deferred twenty-four total points, then the two group members who deferred twenty points were both ranked as least influential in the group. If there was a tie for most or least influential, both team members were put in that position and the middle position in that group was left empty. This explains the imbalance across group positions in table 1.

Next, within each group, we examined the extent to which the White group members deferred relative to their Black or Mexican American group members on each question and overall. For each item that was ranked, the deference that the Black or Mexican American group members gave was subtracted from the deference the White group members gave. Thus negative numbers indicate that the Black or Mexican American group member deferred more than the White group members, and positive numbers indicate that the White group members deferred more than the Black or Mexican American.

Status Characteristics and Expectation States Theory

Our first set of predictions related to competence assessment by group members and their deferential behavior. Competence assessments and deferential behavior directly relate to task ability and, for SC-EST research, is usually at the heart of stereotypes activated in team settings. Competence and deference measures are different from assessments related to “willingness to interact,” as interacting itself does not necessarily relate to competence but is instead a more affective measure.

For White and Mexican American groups, we find that the experimental manipulation intervenes in status processes. Specifically, in the experimental condition, but not the control condition, White participants rate their Mexican American counterparts as similarly competent to White group members. When we look at deferential behavior, we find an intervention effect such that in the control condition but not the experimental condition, Mexican American participants are less influential than White participants. In summary, in groups of Mexican American and White participants, the intervention decreased inequality. For groups that included White and Black participants, however, there was no effect of the intervention on either competence attributions or deference (apart from Black participants’ assessments of their competence).

Intergroup Contact Theory

Our other set of predictions considered how prior contact affected willingness to interact with the group. The ICT literature consistently documents how prior contact with an out-group positively impacts willingness to interact with members of the out-group in the future. We ask, does prior contact affect the desire to further interact with those in the group that was initially assigned?

We find that past contact increases White participants’ willingness for future contact with the group, but no support for this relationship for Mexican American or Black participants. We also find support for one of the most established findings in ICT: prior out-group contact decreased intergroup anxiety for White, Mexican American, and Black participants. Finally, for White participants we find that intergroup anxiety mediates the relationship between prior contact and willingness to interact. These findings largely support ICT; however, more research is needed to understand the potential for contact to differentially affect members of historically advantaged and disadvantaged groups (Pettigrew and Hewstone 2017). By examining two different racial-ethnic group compositions, we can examine the robustness of the theories and importance of different contexts. The differences we find in our study are theoretically important.

Combining ICT and SC-EST

Finally, we examined the effect of contact on assessments of competence (cognitive stereotypes) and deferential behavior. In so doing, we examined the effect of a well-established intervention (contact) on common measures of group inequality from SC-EST. Contrary to expectations, we find no effect of contact on White group members’ assessments of Black or Mexican American group members’ competence or deference. These findings are particularly interesting, because contact reduces intergroup anxiety and, for White group members, increases willingness for future contact. Thus, although contact is positively associated with more positive affect, it does not interrupt the emergence of a racial status hierarchy.