When does contact reduce prejudice? Social and temporal categorizations as conditions of effective intergroup contact

Theory and research are presented relating the impact of social and temporal categorizations on the effectiveness of intergroup contact. The author reviews and compares previous proposals and his own more recent hypotheses concerning the role of intergroup perception in the processes of reducing prejudice and improving intergroup relations after successful contact. Three major approaches (personalized cognitions, salient categories, common ingroup identity) are discussed in context of author's research on Polish-Jewish encounters. The new conception basing on perspective-taking (namely: intergroup transgressions) is proposed as a possible alternative to current approaches. peerReviewed publishedVersion