Diane Kobrynowicz
The College of New Nersey

Monica Biernat
University of Kansas

Bodenhausen and Macrae's model of stereotype activation and inhibition
is impressive in scope, and we admire their goal of theoretical integration
across multiple-level phenomena. Their understanding of stereotyping and
person perception in terms of the two basic principles of activation/inhibi-
tion and hierarchical control is an elegant framework that offers much
promise in unifying the area of stereotyping research.

Although we appreciate this framework, we have concerns with some
of its details and assumptions. In addition, with any model of large scope,
certain issues will inevitably be overlooked. In this commentary, we ad-
dress what we believe to be some important aspects of stereotyping and
person perception that are absent in Bodenhausen and Macrae's discussion.
We raise three concerns: (a) that Bodenhausen and Macrae's model may
only apply to negative or "bad" stereotypes; (b) that the model assumes
that assimilation to stereotypes is the default process, despite the fact that
contrastive or null effects of stereotypes occur with some frequency; and (c)

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