Walter Stephan

Walter G. Stephan is a social psychologist, listed as an emeritus member of the psychology faculty at New Mexico State University with a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and research interests in stereotyping and prejudice and in cross-cultural psychology. With Cookie White Stephan he first proposed integrated threat theory in 2000, which explains prejudice between groups through perceived threat rather than actual threat. The original theory had four components: realistic threats, symbolic threats, intergroup anxiety and negative stereotypes. Before building the theory the Stephans had been researching intergroup anxiety, and in 2002 Stephan and Renfro proposed an updated version that reduced the four components to two basic types, realistic and symbolic threats, treating anxiety and stereotypes as subtypes of threat.