Perceiving Persons as a Group: Categorization and Intergroup Relations

A recurring theme in social psychology is that persons seek to understand or make sense of their environment (Asch, 1951; Carroll & Payne, 1976; Heider, 1958). In most social situations we are bombarded with a multitude of stimulation. Because we cannot possibly analyze and respond to all of this information, we must narrow our focus to some subset of the field. That subset may be further reduced as we identify and categorize the selected stimuli.