ABSTRACT
Most people are prepared to make interpretations and inferences on the basis of a very small amount of information. It is because most people are prepared to make inferences on the basis of the most slender evidence that so many of our initial inferences about other people are misleading and sometimes completely false. But the people whom we know intimately can be perceived as possessing traits which are not entirely congruous because we see them in a variety of social situations and conditions in which different aspects of their personalities are brought into play. The 'halo effect' is example of the tendency of persons to overestimate the homogeneity of other people, to perceive consistency at the expense of reality. Perhaps people in real life fall along a continuum from flat to round. Prejudiced people usually refer to the group towards whom they are prejudiced in terms of stereotypes.
