What Determines The Motivation Of Contact-the Influence Of Social Status And Contact Benefits

Intergroup Contact Theory is widely accepted as to improve the relationship betweenthe different groups. By sorting the existing literature, we found that contact motivationhad only been treated as one index to detect the effect of intergroup contact and not figuredout which factors determine the motivation of intergroup contact. Based on these reasons,this very research takes the contact motivation as dependent variable, focusing on thefactors of benefits of contact, group status and the attribution to the group status.Study1, preparing the program by choosing pictures of different groups.Study2, exploring the influence of contact benefits and group status to contactmotivation. First, get participants ready for the coming contact by watching these picturesand judging their social status, then control participants’ expectation of benefits byinstruction. And the result shows that the main effect of both independent variables issignificant. And the interaction effect is significant too, which means that the two‘“expected contact benefits”,“social status”, could predict the strength of intergroupcontact motivation.Former researches shows that the effect of contact is more effective for high socialstatus participants, however according to study1, high social status participants would notlike to get engaged in contact. And high social status participants are calmer facing contactbenefits. So we assume that cognitive factors play a role in this process. And study3focuses on the high group status participants and brings in the cognitive factor: theattribution to the group status.Study3, the result comes to the same; high expectation of contact could predict highercontact motivation. But, contrary to hypothesis, the motivation of participants who have internal attribution is higher.The research thinks that low social status groups pay closer attention to contactbenefits just because they need that. And that high social status groups more care about thepsychological benefits and their motivation is accordingly not so sensitive anymore.Meanwhile, psychological benefits partly come from the compare with lower social statusones, which spurs advantage groups softly.