It is who you know that counts: Intergroup contact and judgments about race‐based exclusion

Abstract

Intergroup contact and evaluations about race-based exclusion were assessed for majority and minority students in fourth, seventh, and tenth grades (<i>N</i> = 685). Students were presented with scenarios depicting cross-race relations in contexts of dyadic friendship, parental discomfort, and peer group disapproval. Participants reporting higher levels of intergroup contact gave higher ratings of wrongfulness of exclusion and lower frequency estimations of race-based exclusion than did participants reporting lower levels of such contact. Intergroup contact also predicted students' attributions of motives in two out of three scenarios. Findings are discussed in terms of the extant literature on peer relations, moral reasoning, and intergroup contact.