ABSTRACT
In all societies, some individuals are stigmatized-they possess attributes or identities that are socially devalued and denigrated, and that subject them to prejudice and discrimination in some contexts (Crocker, Major, & Steele, 1998). The ubiquity and devastating consequences of prejudice, both for the stigmatized and for society more broadly, have led to a tremendous amount of theory and research on the origins of prejudice. Social psychologists, for example, have theorized that prejudice results from group conflict (e.g., Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, 1961), negative stereotypes (e.g., Hamilton & Sherman, 1994); ingroup/outgroup differences (e.g., Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987), threats to the self (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, & Hamilton, 1991), and attempts to justify unequal distributions of power and resources (Sidanius & Pratte, 1993), among other factors.
