ABSTRACT
Prejudice and discrimination are intergroup, as well as interpersonal, phenomena. Consequently, some recent approaches have considered the role of basic group processes, such as social categorization, for understanding the nature of these biases and ways to reduce them. From a social categorization perspective, one universal facet of human perception essential for efficient functioning is the ability to sort people, spontaneously and with minimum effort or awareness, into a smaller number of meaningful categories (Brewer, 1988; see also Fiske, Lin, & Neuberg, 1999; see also McGarty, this volume). Given the centrality of the self in social perception, social categorization further involves a basic distinction between the group containing the self, the ingroup, and other groups, the outgroups-between the “we’s” and the “they’s” (see social identity theory, Tajfel & Turner, 1979; self-categorization theory, Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987; see also Hogg & Hornsey, this volume).
