Socializing with the Out-Group: Testing the Contact Hypothesis among School Students in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Socializing with the Out-Group: Testing the Contact Hypothesis among School Students in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this article is to test the contact hypothesis among self-identifying Bosniak, Croat, Serb, and Bosnian high school seniors in Bosnia and Herzegovina, using the Other-Group Orientation Scale (Roberts et al., 1999). This article finds that attending a ‘non-appropriate’ ethnic school statistically increases tolerance of out-group members, which conforms to the predictions of the contact hypothesis, originally put forth by Allport (1958). This field research also found that secondary schools are largely homogenous in the country, thus preventing high levels of cross-ethnic contact in schools, which was expected. This article represents the first post-war, countrywide quantitative testing of the contact hypothesis.

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