Affective Influences on Stereotyping and Intergroup Relations

A major theme of recent research on emotion has been the recognition of the intimate connections between feeling and thinking. Emotions have long been conceived of as arising from a functionally separate system that is at best orthogonal to or, more likely, at odds with effective reasoning and intellectual functioning. This view has been supplanted by an emerging acknowledgement of the elaborately coordinated interactions, and indeed indispensable collaboration, between the cognitive and affective systems (e.g., Clore, Schwarz, & Conway, 1994; Damasio, 1994; Frijda, 1986; Zajonc & Markus, 1984). For example, Damasio (1994) reports compelling evidence of the dysfunctions that arise when subjective feelings are no longer available to guide reactions, dysfunctions that are especially pronounced in the sphere of social functioning. As he notes, the “social domain is the one closest to our destiny and the one which involves the greatest uncertainty and complexity” (p. 169), so it is perhaps not too surprising that it is in this domain that we most urgently need guidance from our “gut reactions” and subjective feelings. In this chapter, we will explore the role of affect in one particularly important social arena, namely intergroup perception and behavior. Examination of the growing body of research directed at this topic reveals a complex but largely coherent picture of multiple pathways by which our subjective feeling states influence the way we perceive and respond to the members of stereotyped social groups. In many respects, the major findings challenge common preconceptions about the role of affect in intergroup relations, such as the notion that negative affect is uniformly associated with patterns of intergroup bias and discrimination or the idea that positive affect is an all-purpose remedy for these same problems. Although perhaps initially surprising, the overall pattern of findings, as we shall see, does accord with more general principles being uncovered by contemporary affect researchers. The Affective Context of Intergroup Relations