it.According to Allport's earlier definition of stereotyping, such a pre judgment must be resistant to change. Such resistance may be put down to the processes of thinking leading to biases (Howitt, et al., 1989). For us to believe that our pre judgements are correct, what we perceive to be is what we see. For example, Duncan (1976) showed that how we perceive the social world can be affected by our categorizations, such as, in this case, racial stereotypes. The study found that, because black people were stereotyped as aggressive people (by the subjects), the subjects perceived a situation as being more aggressive, close to a fight, when played by black actors whereas with white actors, it was seen as playful. Such biases may also be looked at as self-fulfilling, or even self-protecting, the 'sense of self'. This self positively is 'natural', and as such can be projected onto one's perception of the in-group - having similar effects at the other end of the spectrum. That is, a negative view of an individual projected onto 'their' group, or the out-group. This is the reason for most stereotypes being negative.Our categorization and biases can also have an effect on others. Essed (1988) found that white stereotyping of black people had a damaging effect in job interviews, through discomfort and unrest due to the questions asked during the interview. This study was conducted out of the laboratory. A further example of the effects of racial stereotyping on others is a replication of a British government commissioned study in which a black and a white person apply to rent a flat. The landlords pre judgment of black people through stereotyping affected the black man's chance and legal right to rent the flat (BBC television, Black and White, 1987). This is an example of the out-group homogeneity effect (Brown, 1995)..The cognitive approach of categorization does have its flaws however. Categorization theorists give a rather mechanistic impre...
