ABSTRACT
Throughout the history of the study of stereotyping and prejudice, theorists have wrestled in one way or another with the idea that stereotyping is easy, if not natural, and that responding without bias is more difcult and effortful. Early theorists like Lippman (1922) and Allport (1954) suggested that stereotypes play a central and pervasive role in social perception. It has been argued for example, that stereotypes ease the burden of the social perceiver in responding to a potentially overwhelming and complex social environment (see Hamilton & Sherman, 1994, for a review). Allport (1954) suggested that “the mind tends to categorize environmental events in the ‘grossest’ manner compatible with action” (p. 21), reecting a now common assumption that such categorizations take little effort and facilitate adjustment to the environment. More contemporarily, Macrae, Milne, and Bodenhausen (1994) suggested that stereotypes “serve to simplify perception, judgment, and action. As energy saving devices, they spare perceivers the ordeal of responding to an almost incomprehensively complex social world” (p. 37). As early as 1954, Allport suggested that “It seems a safe generalization to say that an ethnic label arouses a stereotype which in turn leads to rejective behavior” (p. 333). As such, stereotypes came to be viewed as cognitive structures that were easily activated and then applied to members of stigmatized groups.
