Learning What Most People Like: How Implicit Attitudes and Normative Evaluations Shape Prejudice and Stereotype Threat and Are Shaped by Social Identity Protection and Culture

As people interact with their social environment they face two fundamental tasks. On one hand, people need to understand how their world works and need to know what objects to approach and what objects to avoid. That is, they need to know what sort of objects in their environment will allow them to cope effectively and what objects impede their success. Such understanding should arise from personal experience and should form the basis of attitudes. On the other hand, however, people also live within social groups-they are social animals. Because of this basic social reality they need to not only understand what objects they want to approach and what objects they want to avoid, they also need to understand how people in their social environment react to the objects they encounter. They need to know what sort of objects in their environment will allow them to t in with their social groups and what objects may impair their sense of belonging in their groups. Such understanding should arise from observing how objects are treated and depicted by the group and should form the basis of group norms.