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Highlighting and Reducing the Impact of Negative Aging Stereotypes During Older Adults' Cognitive Testing

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Published on: January 24, 2020

Humanizing the homeless: does contact erode stereotypes?

Tom Knecht¹, Lisa M Martinez

¹Department of Political Science, University of Denver, Denver, CO 80208, USA. tknecht2@du.edu

Social Science Research

|October 28, 2009

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Interpersonal contact with homeless individuals reduced negative perceptions of homelessness causes. However, volunteer experiences did not significantly alter policy preferences, challenging common assumptions.

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Area of Science:

Social Psychology
Sociology
Public Policy

Background:

Understanding public attitudes towards homelessness is crucial for effective social policy.
The contact hypothesis suggests intergroup contact can reduce prejudice.
Previous research has explored the link between perceptions of homelessness and policy support.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if direct interpersonal contact influences attitudes toward the homeless.
To examine the impact of volunteering on perceptions of homelessness causes.
To assess whether changes in causal attributions affect policy preferences.

Main Methods:

A field experiment was conducted using volunteers for Project Homeless Connect.
Pre- and post-event surveys were administered to assess attitude changes.
Statistical analysis was used to compare survey responses before and after the event.

Main Results:

Volunteers showed a significant decrease in attributing homelessness to individual characteristics (e.g., substance abuse, work aversion).
Attitudes regarding policy preferences remained largely unchanged after the volunteering experience.
A divergence was observed between attributions of causes and policy preferences.

Conclusions:

Interpersonal contact can alter specific perceptions about the causes of homelessness.
The assumption that causal beliefs directly translate to policy preferences may be flawed.
Findings suggest a more complex relationship between attitudes and policy support regarding homelessness.