How do individuals and human groups see themselves, influence each other and enter into relationships? In the social environment, each person has to understand and evaluate other people and situate themselves in relation to them and predict the direction that their potential interactions will take. But the time to pose this ‘social judgement’ is short! In the context of life within society, efficiency is in effect based on the very rapid processing and use of available information. We also build our vision of the other on the basis of several indicators which take us into the realm of stereotypes and prejudices – skin colour, facial features, age, size, gender, accent, type of car, clothing, etc.

In one sense, social judgement is triple-headed. More exactly it comprises three components, each one of which, taken in isolation, is not sufficient to provide an awareness of the phenomenon’s complexity. Stereotypes constitute the first, cognitive, facet. According to the definition offered by Jacques-Philippe Leyens and Vincent Yzerbyt, of the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), they refer to "socially shared beliefs concerning the personal characteristics, generally personality features, but also often the behaviour, of a group of people." A classic example: the idea according to which women are not capable of occupying management positions.

As for prejudices, they lead us to the emotional sphere of social judgement. Once again according to Leyens and Yzerbyt, they correspond to ‘a feeling, generally negative, towards one or more people because of their belonging to a particular group.’ Not liking Parisians or lawyers, for example. Concerning discrimination, the third element involved in social judgement, it represents the behavioural component within it. In other words it covers discriminatory acts against a group. Thus, during job recruitment exams some people would reject out of hand the applications of immigrant people.

As is stressed by Benoît Dardenne, the head of the University de Liège’s social psychology department, complex relationships, sometimes reflecting an apparent contradiction, can bring the three components of social judgement together. It is not rare to have people notably say that they think well of a social group, but cannot prevent themselves from discriminating them. In the same way certain individuals have a propensity to harbour negative prejudices against a group, whilst they are in favour of equality (stereotypes).