Abstract
This chapter discusses the role of anxiety in facilitating stereotypic judgment of outgroup behavior. Anxiety increases one's reliance on social stereotypes and makes the person traitor to his or her objective reason. When anxiety distracts persons from careful attention to the environment, they rely more on available cognitive structures such as social stereotypes in making judgments of others. Increased reliance on stereotypes manifests in two ways. First, stereotypes supply best guesses to complete gaps in information created by anxiety. Second, counter-stereotypic information loses impact when persons are anxious and their attention is restricted. In the research discussed in the chapter, stereotypes are beliefs about the characteristics or behaviors of most members of a social group.
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