ABSTRACT
People have battled between themselves over racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, religious, and nationality differences. Researchers in psychology who study prejudice and stereotyping are interested in understanding how prejudice forms, what maintains the prejudice, and how that prejudice can be reduced or eliminated. Prejudice can be thought of as a biased evaluation of a group, based on real or imagined characteristics of the group member. A prejudice is a preference, an attitude, either against or in favor of a group. Some of the earliest studies on prejudice were conducted by P. A. Katz and K. W. Braly. They were interested in understanding the content of the stereotypes that Whites had about Blacks. However, research also revealed a disconnect between how people think they would behave toward stereotyped outgroup members and how they actually do act with those individuals. Children are exposed to stereotypes in all forms of media in their culture.
