The impact of interracial interaction has been looked at from a myriad of approaches and different populations; time and time again researchers have found similar results showing a wide variety of personal, institutional, and societal benefits are correlated to interactions with diverse individuals. Wishing to further examine the impact of interracial interaction, I set out to explore the relationship between frequent and positive interracial contact and business students' racial perceptions. In order to investigate this potential relationship, the following research question was investigated: do undergraduate business students who have frequent and positive interracial interactions exhibit more of less positive racial perceptions of other races? Participants included 910 domestic undergraduate business students enrolled at a large public research university in the Midwest. A structured web-based quantitative survey design was used to answer this question. Measures include students' perceptions/attitudes toward other racial groups (dependent variable), the opportunity for contact, frequency of contact, and quality of contact (independent variables), and various demographic variables designed to collect information ranging from students' age and gender to their hometown and parents education level.Data was analyzed using t-test and ANOVA statistical procedures. The final results of this study indicate that business students who have frequent (weekly or daily) and positive interracial interactions typically possess more positive racial perceptions than their peers whose interactions are infrequent (never, once or twice a year or semester) and less positive. More specifically, the findings show that (1) business students who reported more opportunities for contact (i.e., structural diversity) generally had moderately more positive racial perceptions than students who reported having less opportunity for interracial contact, (2) business students who identified interacting frequently (weekly or daily) with members of other racial groups possessed moderately more positive racial perceptions than students whose interactions were less frequent (never or once or twice a year/semester), (3) business students who rated their overall interracial experiences to date as positive or very positive held significantly more positive racial perceptions than students who rated their interracial interactions as neutral, negative or very negative, and (4) a business student's race significantly influences his or her racial attitude.
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