Intergroup stereotyping

Stereotypes correspond to perceivers' beliefs about the attributes, typically personality traits, that define a group. In line with the idea that intergroup stereotyping follows from, and shapes, the relations between groups and their members, recent research efforts on the so-called Big Two, reveal that two dimensions of stereotyping, that is, warmth and competence, organize the way groups are stereotyped by virtue of their relative status and their interdependence and orient downstream emotions and behaviors. Next to stereotype assessment, we devote special attention to the question of stereotype ambivalence as well as to the compensation effect, two phenomena related to the fact that perceivers tend to see groups either high on warmth and low on competence or vice versa. Yet another important theme in contemporary work is that interactions are greatly influenced by the fact that people prove sensitive to stereotypic views that they think others hold about them. A final set of issues concern the degree of accuracy of stereotype content in light of their sensitivity to structural and contextual factors impinging on groups as well as the various functions that stereotypes serve.