Think of a time when you made a decision without thinking carefully. What factors motivate us to make this decision? We often make quick, effortless decisions based on our stereotype about other people. The stereotypes we create are simply due to the difference between their nationality, gender, sexual orientation, age or ability and ours. Racial stereotype, being one of the most commonly seen stereotypes in our lives, plays an effective role in how people form judgments about other people and therefore make decisions across three situations. What are the Chinese like? Do they all have small eyes? Are all Chinese good at math? Do all Americans like burgers? People have attitudes and beliefs about different groups because they allow us to quickly answer these types of questions. Such beliefs and attitudes are called stereotypes and are mental shortcuts that allow us to quickly organize information about other people. Stereotypes are activated automatically and without conscious awareness, even among people who describe themselves as free from prejudice (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). There are no explicitly good or bad stereotypes. If you have a negative belief towards people, the stereotype turns into prejudice and therefore discrimination. Prejudice consists of negative judgments and attitudes towards a person based on group membership. On the other hand, discrimination is the inappropriate and unjustified treatment of people based on their group. Prejudice becomes discrimination when it results in unequal treatment of individuals who are the object of prejudicial attitudes (Ricardo A. Frazer & Uco J. Wiersma, 2001). People may wonder what causes this to happen. We tend to favor members of our own group more because… middle of paper… judgmental in decision making. European Journal of Social Psychology, 18, 161-176. Inn, A., Wheeler, A. C., & Sparling, C. L. (1997). The effects of suspect race and situational danger on police officers' shooting behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 616-626. Stepanikova, I., Mollborn, S., Cook, K. S., Thom, D. H., & Kramer, R. M. (2006). Patients' race, ethnicity, language, and trust in a doctor. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 47, 390.Triandis, H. C. (1963). Factors influencing employee selection in two cultures. Journal of Applied Psychology, 47, 89-96. Turner, B.J., Cunningham, W.E., Duan, N., Anderson, R.M., Shapiro, M.F., & Bozzette, S.A., et al. (2000). Delayed medical care after diagnosis in a US national probability sample of human immunodeficiency virus-infected persons. Internal Medicine Archive, 160, 2614-2622.