Prejudice and conflicts between ethnic groups or against a minority group, such as Asians, psychologists hypothesize, can be reduced when the amount of interaction among group members increases, which constitutes the contact theory (Dovidio et al., 2017). A recent study also finds that diversity on college campuses enhances students’ diversity awareness (which further enhances college brand citizen behaviors) and social trust (Yao et al., 2019). Some scholars, however, believe that more interaction between ethnic and racial groups, particularly those with economic inequalities, solicit competition for limited resources and therefore promotes inter-group hostility or suppression of the dominating group over the minority ones, which causes workers from minority groups being usually paid less than those from the dominant group and naturally leads to inter-ethnic resentment (Bonacich, 1972) that can be intensified when the dominant group perceives a threat from the raising minority groups (Conerly et al., 2022). Asians in America, the “model minorities,” has not been protected from ethnic prejudices, which have in fact been intensified during the COVID-19 period (Li and Nicholson, 2021). So, how does interaction (living or working) with other people influence their perception of each other? Does it make the perception more positive, as predicted by the contact theory, or more negative, as predicted by the conflict theory? What other factors contribute to people’s perception of each other? This study, with high-quality data from the General Social Survey (1972–2018; https://gss.norc.org/get-the-data/spss ), attempts to answer these research questions. The survey is nationally representative in the US and contains questions to measure how much people of different ethnicities live (in family or community) or work with, know, and perceive each other from different perspectives. It provides valuable data to explore how interaction with different ethnicites impacts the social perception of them and facilitates our reflection upon the social sentiment about ethic groups and social progress on these matters.