The sharedness of social stereotypes and intergroup communication

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Social psychological studies of stereotypes and stereotyping that have been conducted from the social cognition perspective were reviewed in order to postulate a theoretical framework for the study of stereotypes as shared representation. A series of experiments were then conducted to test hypotheses derived from the framework. The first set of experiments examined the processes in which communications take into consideration the communication partners' attitudes and beliefs. It was further demonstrated that the modified communication due to such consideration exerted reflexive effects on the communicator's cognitive representations and beliefs. In addition, differences in informational status between the communicators showed significant influences. A second series of experiments investigated the contents of dynamic conversations involving stereotypes. The results revealed that conversations about out-groups represented a greater number of stereotype-inconsistent information whereas conversations about the in-group contained more stereotype-consistent information. The collective level of cognitive processes assumed to underlie these effects were compared to the research findings about the individual level of processes. Factors relevant to cultural sharedness were also investigated in a separate set of studies. Still another set of studies examined how consensual perceptions are formed among the members of social groups. Taken together, the results from these studies revealed commonalities and discrepancies between the individual versus collective levels of psychological processes. The findings demonstrated that the collective nature of social representations can be examined through empirical (i.e., experimental) methodology.