STEREOTYPES, PREJUDICE, AND JUDGMENTS OF GROUP MEMBERS - THE MEDIATING ROLE OF PUBLIC-POLICY DECISIONS

In this paper, we argue that one's public policy stance reliably influ ences how one judges individual cases of policy application. And to th e extent that stereotypes and prejudice have reliable effects on publi c policy judgments, they have important effects on individual judgment s. To test these hypotheses, we assessed subjects' perceptions and jud gments of two target groups: gays and welfare recipients. For each tar get group, we measured: (1) subjects' perceived stereotypicality and p rejudice; (2) subjects' public policy stance on three social policy is sues, and (3) subjects' judgments of how fair or appropriate the appli cation of each social policy was for specific individuals. Through a s eries of regression analyses and confirmatory structural equation mode ls we found that stereotypes and prejudice reliably predicted public p olicy judgments. The relationship of stereotypes and prejudice to judg ments of individual cases, however, was mediated by one's public polic y stance. That is, the extremity of one's stereotype had important imp lications for one's public policy stance and the public policy stance then had important implications for how one judged the appropriateness of individual instances of policy application. (C) 1996 Academic Pres s, Inc.