We thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this article. The research reported in this article was undertaken while Jolanda Jetten was a visiting Erasmus student at the

Two studies examined whether social norms and children's concern for self-presentation affect their intergroup attitudes. Study 1 examined racial intergroup attitudes and normative beliefs among children aged 6 to 16 years (n 5 155). Accountability (i.e., public self-focus) was experimentally manipulated, and intergroup attitudes were assessed using explicit and implicit measures. Study 2 (n 5 134) replicated Study 1, focusing on national intergroup attitudes. Both studies showed that children below 10 years old were externally motivated to inhibit their in-group bias under high public self-focus. Older children were internally motivated to suppress their bias as they showed implicit but not explicit bias. Study 1, in contrast to Study 2, showed that children with low norm internalization suppressed their out-group prejudice under high public self-focus.

No abstract

Although people simultaneously belong to multiple social categories, any one of these competing representations can dominate the categorization process. It is surprising therefore to learn that only a few studies have considered the question of how people are categorized when multiple categorizations are available. In addition, relatively little is known about the cognitive mechanisms through which these categorization effects are realized. In the reported research, we attempted to extend recent ideas from work on selective attention to shed some light on these fundamental issues in social perception. Our basic contention was that following the initial identification of a person's applicable categories, the categorization process is driven by the interplay of both excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms. The results of 3 studies supported this contention. We discuss our findings in the wider context of contemporary issues in social stereotyping.

No abstract