The quest for theoretical integration, of course, extends well beyond the realm of stereotyping research and touches the very discipline of psychology itself. Many notable thinkers have lamented the fragmented state of knowledge in the field, sometimes excusing it as a byproduct of the general immaturity of the discipline. Kimble (1994) put this quite succinctly in noting that: "The knowledge of psychology is an array of bits and pieces without an organizing theme" (p. 510). In light of this rather sobering comment, it is interesting to monitor the flavor of contemporary debate on the nature of psychological knowledge. Is the discontinuity of psychological knowledge an inevitable consequence of its relatively recent appearance on the intellectual landscape, or is it possible to undertake a meaningful integration of disparate research findings based on the application of some core cognitive or computational principles? Although a unified theory of stereotyping may be ultimately elusive, it should nonetheless be possible to develop integrative frameworks that encompass a range of extant research findings and rely on theoretical principles and cognitive processes that have found widespread and fruitful applicability across a variety of phenomena in psychology and the related neurosciences. In the present chapter, we present just such a framework.

In recent years, some candidates for general integrating principles have been proposed by theorists who are optimistic about the prospects for a unified science of the mind (Clark, 1996; Kimble, 1994; R. Smith, 1992). Our belief is that these principles can also be usefully applied to enhance our understanding of a variety of issues involved in stereotyping and social perception. In the present chapter, accordingly, we incorporate these ideas into a general model of the influence of stereotypes on interpersonal impressions, judgments, and behaviors. The model represents a conceptual integration of stereotyping phenomena that brings together neuropsychological mechanisms, cognitive and motivational processes, and situational/cultural factors in developing an understanding of when stereotypes are influential in thought and action, as well as when they are not. Although emphasizing concepts of broad applicability across behavioral domains, the model we propose has obvious and deep intellectual debts to several prominent frameworks that emerged specifically from research on attitudes and social cognition.