ABSTRACT
As Federico and Luks note, “race continues to play an important role in conditioning not only individuals’ life outcomes, but also their social and political attitudes.”1 This is true in the United States, in Europe and in much of the rest of the world. Not surprisingly, political psychologists have long been interested in the roots of racial prejudice. What is it that makes apparently reasonable, normal, psychologically healthy individuals discriminate-either overtly or covertly-against someone else or an entire group, based on nothing more than the fact that this person or group happens to possess a skin color different from their own? This is one of the great puzzles of social and political psychology-not to say social science as a whole-and it is unsurprising that many have sought to address the causes of this widespread phenomenon.
