Producing Equal-Status Interracial Interaction: A Replication

This paper reports a replication study of a recent experiment by Cohen and Roper (1972) which attempted to produce equal-status contact between black and white junior high school boys in a controlled laboratory setting. Ourfindings lend general support to those obtained by Cohen and Roper in the original study. The results indicate that equal-status contact should not be assumed when blacks and whites interact, even when variables like socioeconomic status, age, and sex, for example, are controlled. Rather, equal status is a condition which can be achieved when the expectations of both blacks and whites are treated in advance of the interaction, or (though not found in the original experiment) when black expectations alone are given a particularly powerful treatment.