ABSTRACT
Social psychology has established the consensus over the past 30 years that in order to understand relations between groups we need to investigate the ways in which group members come to perceive and learn about their own and other groups. Indeed, a volume like the present one, which reflects many different perspectives, would make little sense if this consensus did not exist. A common feature of contemporary discussions of the way stereotypes form is their extensive reference to the process of social categorization. This apparent consensus nevertheless conceals some deep divisions within the discipline. Although just about everybody agrees that the process of categorization is used by group members to make sense of the groups with which they interact, it is certainly not true that all scholars agree about the nature of that categorization process.
