The Psychology of Group Perception

The Psychology of Group Perceptionis focuses on a central issue in social psychology, namely how social groups are perceived and thought about. The contributors are leading social psychologists who have all contributed in important ways to the psychology of group perception, focusing in particular on three interrelated issues: (1) whether groups are seen to be diverse or relatively homogeneous; (2) whether groups are seen as real and stable or only transitory and ephemeral; and (3) whether group membership derives from some essential quality of the members or rather is based on social constructions. These three issues are fundamental to group perception, as inferences from group membership are fundamentally affected by the perceived variability, entitativity, and essentialism of those groups. The chapters in the volume are divided into two major sections, with those in the first focusing on the relations among perceived variability, entitativity, and essentialism, and those in the second focusing moreon the origins of variability, entitativity, and essentialism. This volume should be of interest to social psychologists and to those in other disciplines fundamentally interested in how we think about the groups to which we do and do not belong.