RACIAL CATEGORIZATION AND STEREOTYPE-BASED JUDGMENTS ABOUT HOMELESS PEOPLE

The present study uses a social-cognitive paradigm to examine the asso ciation between racial categorization and stereotype-based judgments a bout homeless people. The study uses data from a national White subsam ple (N = 1,221) surveyed about attitudes toward homeless/homeless ment ally ill people. It was hypothesized that individual differences in pe rceptions of the representativeness of Blacks in the homeless populati on, as measured by subjective estimates of the percentage of Blacks, w ould be associated with the enhancement of racially relevant negative stereotypes about homeless people. A secondary hypothesis was that per ceptions of the representativeness of Blacks would be more strongly as sociated with the stereotype of homeless people as dangerous than with the view of them as lazy. The results support these hypotheses.