The social psychology of intergroup relations and categorical differentiation

Hundreds of studies have been conducted to detect, from a more or less ‘sociographic’ viewpoint, how members of different social groups perceive their own groups and those of others. Undoubtedly, much of this research on discrimination, prejudice and social stereotypes, for which the segregationist ideology of the USA and the nazi regime in Europe formed the dark sociological background, has its origin in a will to understand ‘this inhuman but all too human’ behaviour. Nevertheless, important as this area of research may be in trying to reveal the effect of a given ideology, the work deriving from the problems between groups has, for a long time, only enabled us to describe or construe a dated and localized ‘geo-psychological’ chart of the characteristics attributed by different social groups to each other.