The interface of the affective and cognitive domains of human nature has been explored with particular enthusiasm in recent years. The theoretical integration of affective and cognitive processes promises to yield important advances in social psychology generally, but no topic of study seems likely to profit from this reunification more than the study of stereotyping and discrimination. Earlier in this century, these topics were viewed in largely motivational and affective terms derived from Freudian and Marxist thought. More recently, motivational approaches have been supplanted by a cognitive analysis focusing on common information-processing mechanisms (Hamilton, 1981). Although this cognitive analysis has been fruitful, it has become increasingly obvious that emotion is far too central a component of intergroup relations to be discarded by those who would understand intergroup phenomena. The major goal of this chapter is to present a general cognitive model of the processes involved in stereotype-based discrimination and to explore some of the principal means by which emotion affects these processes.

Before commencing with this objective, it is useful to consider the nature of emotions that characterize intergroup situations, which for the present purposes include situations in which one is thinking about members of other social groups, regardless of whether they are physically present or not. First, there is integral affect, or the emotion(s) elicited by the social group itself and the usual conditions and contexts with which the group is associated. For many stereotyped groups, the affect that is integral to situations involving them is decidedly negative, often involving anxiety, irritation, disgust, and other negative feelings (Dijker, 1987; Jackson & Sullivan, 1988; McConahay, 1986; Stephan & Stephan, 1985; Wilder & Shapiro, 1989). The degree, and therefore the impact, of this sort of affect should be substantially greater in actual interaction settings as opposed to situations in which one is merely thinking about outgroup members. Intergroup perceptions may also be influenced by incidental affect, or emotion(s) elicited by situations unrelated to the intergroup context. One of the major themes in the affect and cognition literature is the extent to which affect elicited in one context can affect memory and judgments in many other contexts (e.g., Forgas & Bower, 1988; Isen, 1987; Schwarz & Clore, 1988; Wyer & Srull, 1989). If emotion and mood can have pervasive effects on social information processing, they may affect the propensity to stereotype members of a social group even when they arise for reasons having nothing to do with the group or its members.