Negative stereotypes may lead to prejudice, a deep-seated feeling of unkindness and ill will toward particular groups, often accompanied by feelings of superiority over those groups. In its most extreme form, prejudice can lead to a belief that the lives of some people are worth less than those of others. Indeed, the institution of slavery in the United States flourished based on this belief. Even today, the cultural landscape of almost every nation is dotted with groups that advocate the notion of racial superiority.

Prejudice involves prejudging a person or persons negatively, usually without efforts to discover the relevant facts. Although we often associate prejudice with race and ethnicity, such snap judgments about people may also be based on any type of group membership (for example, gender, social class, age, religion, disability). It can take even very limited visual or communication cues to trigger these prejudices. For example, one of the stars of the aforementioned TV show Duck Dynasty was escorted out of a New York City hotel when he asked to find the restroom. The hotel staff assumed that his long, scruffy beard meant that he was a “homeless” person rather than a paying guest! The staff no doubt also committed the fundamental attribution error, discussed earlier in this chapter, by assuming a set of negative personal traits that goes along with being homeless (or bearded). We’ll discuss these perceptual errors further—and ways to remove them—in Chapter 5.