This volume is a comprehensive overview of classic and contemporary work on intergroup contact, combining an extensive meta-analysis of 515 published studies on the topic with the authors' renowned research. It provides researchers, students and professionals in social psychology and related fields with a rich sourcebook on intergroup contact, at a time of intergroup turmoil around the world.

1. The Origins of Intergroup Contact Theory. 2. Does Intergroup Contact Typically Reduce Intergroup Prejudice? 3. Do Intergroup Contact Effects Generalize? 4. Are the Effects of Intergroup Contact Universal? 5. When Does Intergroup Contact Reduce Prejudice? 6. How Does Intergroup Contact Reduce Prejudice? 7. Does Intergroup Contact Reduce All Aspects of Prejudice? 8. Does Cross-Group Friendship Play a Special Role in Reducing Prejudice? 9. Does Group Status Moderate Contact Effects? 10. Intergroup Contact as One of Many Predictors of Prejudice. 11. Criticisms of Intergroup Contact Theory. 12. When Intergroup Contact Fails. 13. Summing Up and Looking to the Future.

Thomas F. Pettigrew is Research Professor of Social Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Since 1956, he has published 400 articles, book chapters, and reviews in addition to sixteen books and monographs. Pettigrew is widely credited with keeping social psychology's focus on intergroup contact over the past half-century. This research has focused on determining the critical links between the macro (cultural and structural), meso (situational), and micro (individual) levels of social science theory and research - with intergroup contact constituting one of these links. Pettigrew served as president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) and later received the Society's Kurt Lewin and Distinguished Service Awards and twice its Gordon Allport Intergroup Research Award. In 2002, the Society for Experimental Social Psychology presented him with its Distinguished Scientist Award.

Linda R. Tropp is Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Psychology of Peace and Violence Concentration at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her main research interests concern experiences with intergroup contact among members of minority and majority status groups, identification with social groups, interpretations of intergroup relationships, and responses to prejudice and disadvantage. She is a recipient of the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize for her research on intergroup contact, and she received the McKeachie Early Career Award for the teaching of psychology.