Relationship between Knowledge, Stereotyping, and Prejudice in Interethnic Communication

This study describes, analyzes, critiques, and synthesizes four theories pertaining to interethnic communication: the contact hypothesis, Anxiety/Uncertainty Management Theory, Cultural Theory, and the White Racial Identity Development Model. All center on the relationship between knowledge, stereotyping, and prejudice. What is valuable about those theories is that they attempt to integrate communication into a perspective on cultural, behavioral, social, interactional, and developmental transformations. What the four theories have in common is that the understanding and development of healthy interethnic relations and fl exible interactions require a high degree of ingroup communication and, at the same time, an equally high degree of out-group communication.