Affect and Perceived Group Variability: Implications for Stereotyping and Prejudice

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the affect and perceived group variability and presents the implications for stereotyping and prejudice. Affect is an inexorable force in intergroup relations. Contact with outgroup members is likely to be characterized by heightened levels of both arousal and affect. There are situations in which intergroup contact might produce positive emotions. When interactions between the group members are successful, members are likely to feel happy, jovial, or satisfied. If groups successfully cooperate to obtain a super-ordinate goal, positive affect is likely. In addition, if attitudes about a group are ambivalent, that is, they contain both positive and negative evaluations of the group; then, both positive and negative emotions may be simultaneously evoked by intergroup contact. Whether positive, negative, or ambivalent in valence, emotion appears to be an integral and inevitable part of intergroup interaction. Despite the likely presence of affect during intergroup encounters, relatively little empirical work has directly addressed the impact of affective states on intergroup perceptions, judgments, and behaviors.