Stereotyping and Social Reality provides new treatment of one of the central issues in social psychology, and combines a comprehensive review of the field with new theoretical analysis. As such, the book will be of interest to a broad audience of students and researchers.

Stereotyping - the process of perceiving and reacting to people in terms of their group membership - is a widespread phenomenon, and one of the most widely investigated topics in social psychology. This new book is about the causes and consequences of stereotyping. It begins from the premise that, in order to understand the nature and function of stereotyping, it is essential to understand its role in, and relationship to, the activities of social groups. In so doing, it provides an alternative to more cognitive approaches that regard stereotyping primarily as a bias produced by the limits of...