Lay theories about group origins shape how information is processed and judged

Evidence

How people respond to the members of a particular group is determined in part by the intuitive theory that the person holds. For instance, people who subscribe to the intuitive theory that Blacks lack the ability and/ or motivation to achieve (a view often associated with political conservatism) and those who believe that discrimination limits Blacks’ economic progress (a view associated with liberalism) process and interpret information about Blacks in fundamentally different ways (Wittenbrink, Gist, & Hilton, 1997). Thus, some stereotypes go beyond the mere description of groups in terms of commonly associated traits to explain the origins of those traits in such a way that the group’s social position is seen as justified or unjustified. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1384

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: the MOC “The Wound of the Label: When Knowing Someone Becomes a Way of Erasing Them”