Aiming at identifying the attitudes of graduate students from both public and private universities in relation to urban cleaning workers (garbage men), this study presents a descriptive field research carried out with 200 graduate students: 100 from a public university and 100 from a private one in João Pessoa, PB. Data collection was done by means of attitude, motivation and social desirability scales which were adapted, when it was necessary, for the garbage men occupation and then analyzed through the statistical package SPSS for Windows 15.0, using descriptive and inferential statistics. Issues of great interest to social psychology, such as prejudice, attitude, stereotype and discrimination, as well as their impacts in man-work relation were discussed. The results show that women are more aware of the importance of garbage men occupation for proper public functioning and that there is prejudice in the social relations, that although it is expressed in a subtle way, it still plays a negative role in social relations.
Prejudice; Social discrimination; Street Cleaners; Attitudes; Stigma
