PREJUDICE

    

         As commonly used in psychology, prejudice is not merely a statement of opinion or belief, but an attitude that includes feelings such as contempt, dislike, or loathing. Where prejudices lurk, stereotypes are seldom far behind. Journalist Walter Lippmann (1922) likened stereotypes to "pictures in the head," or mental reproductions of reality, and from there, the term gradually came to mean generalizations -- or, quite often, overgeneralizations -- about the members of a group. As with prejudice, these generalizations can at times be positive (e.g., women are nurturing, Japanese excel at math), but for the most part, they tend to be negative and resistant to change. Stereotypes concerning race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation remain widespread. For instance, as recently as 1999, Merriam-Webster (the largest dictionary publisher in the United States) listed thesaurus terms for homosexual such as "fruit" and "pederast. Stereotypes are not onlyharmful in their own right; they do damage by fostering prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination often go hand-in-hand, but it is also possible to have one without the others. When an ethnic group is stereotyped with a neutral or positive attribute such as "family-oriented," prejudice and discrimination may not be involved.