Читать книгу Our Social World - Kathleen Odell Korgen - Страница 141

The perspectives just discussed are comprehensive and cover a wide scope. They are paradigms that explain much behavior and many social patterns, but they are hard to test. Middle-range theories of culture bridge the gap between empirical data and abstract or broad general paradigms. R. K. Merton (1968) coined the term and argued that middle-range theories could be used to break down abstract theories into smaller parts to test, thus providing data that could be generalized to a large group.

For example, Pettigrew, Tropp, Wagner, and Christ (2011) examined more than 500 studies that tested the intergroup contact hypothesis, a middle-range theory that maintains that intergroup contact, under appropriate conditions, can reduce prejudice. Through looking at the results of the 500-plus studies, Pettigrew showed that the positive effects of such intergroup contact are universal—across racial, ethnic, national, age, and gender groups.