Establishing how intergroup bias influences the formation and evolution of stereotypes.

拟议的研究将确定社会群体的成员资格和地位如何影响文化定型观念的形成和变化。文化刻板印象是社会类别的模板式划分，其中群体成员资格与拥有某些属性（例如，科学家是极客，苏格兰人是吝啬鬼，男人喜欢蓝色）。陈规定型观念对我们个人和我们的社会产生重大影响：当人们赞同陈规定型观念时，它导致对少数群体成员的偏见和歧视;即使人们驳斥陈规定型观念，仅仅了解其内容也会导致思想和行为上的无意识偏见。然而，在无限复杂的社会环境中，刻板印象通过有效地组织和构建社会信息发挥着至关重要的社会认知作用。鉴于文化刻板印象的普遍性和影响力，我们对文化刻板印象的形成和变化知之甚少，这也许是令人惊讶的。我们认为，刻板印象的形成和变化是通过一个累积的文化进化过程。因为人们拥有共同的偏见，这些偏见会影响信息的记忆和交流，当知识在人与人之间反复传递时，这些偏见会积累起来，导致信息的内容以可预测的方式发生变化。研究表明，当信息在个人之间传递时--有点像儿童游戏中的“中国耳语”或“电话”--它会变得越来越简单和结构化。例如，我们最近证明，随着新的社会信息从一个人传递到另一个人，它会发展出一种以前不存在的类似刻板印象的结构。因此，在文化进化的累积过程中，即使是个人层面的微小偏见，也会转化为更大的社会偏见，如文化刻板印象。拟议的研究将确定与个人社会群体成员身份相关的个人偏见是否会影响文化刻板印象的形成和演变。我们是否认为他人属于与自己相同的社会群体（内群体）或不同的社会群体（外群体）对我们的思想和行为有着深远的影响。群体成员身份往往会导致群体间的偏见，人们更有可能偏爱群体内的成员，而歧视群体外的成员。拟议的研究将确定是否反复沟通的社会信息的内组和外组成员的结果形成相对积极的内组刻板印象和消极的外组刻板印象。此外，拟议的研究还将确定是否有可能根据不同外群体的感知状态（例如，因此，拟议的研究将有助于确定累积的文化演变是否会导致无意但不可避免地形成定型观念，其内容在很大程度上取决于感知者的共同偏见，而不是群体本身的实际属性。

The proposed research will establish how the membership and status of social groups influences how cultural stereotypes form and change. Cultural stereotypes are template-like depictions of social categories whereby group membership is associated with the possession of certain attributes (e.g., scientists are geeky, Scottish people are miserly, men like the colour blue). Stereotypes exert substantial influence on us as individuals and on our society: when people endorse stereotypes it leads to prejudice and discrimination towards members of minority groups; even when people refute stereotypes the mere knowledge of their content can lead to unconscious bias in thoughts and behaviour. Yet, in the face of an infinitely complex social environment stereotypes play a vital social cognitive role by efficiently organising and structuring social information. Given their ubiquity and influence it is perhaps surprising that relatively little is known about how cultural stereotypes form and change.We propose that stereotypes form and change via a process of cumulative cultural evolution. Because people possess shared biases that influence how information is remembered and communicated, when knowledge is repeatedly passed from person to person these biases accumulate causing the content of information to change in predictable ways. Research has shown that when information is passed down chains of individuals - a bit like the children's game often called 'Chinese whispers' or 'telephone' - it becomes increasingly simplified and structured. For example, we recently demonstrated that as novel social information passes from person to person it develops a stereotype-like structure that was not previously present. Thus, through the process of cumulative cultural evolution, even very small amounts of bias at the level of individual people can translate into much bigger societal biases like cultural stereotypes.The proposed research will establish whether individual biases associated with a person's membership of social groups influences the formation and evolution of cultural stereotypes. Whether we perceive others as belonging to the same social group as ourselves (the in-group) or a different social group (the out-group) has profound implications for our thoughts and behaviours. Group membership tends to lead to intergroup bias, with people more likely to favour in-group members and discriminate against out-group members. The proposed research will determine whether repeatedly communicating social information about in-group and out-group members results in the formation of relatively positive in-group stereotypes and negative out-group stereotypes. In addition, the proposed research will also establish whether it is possible to predict how the content of stereotypes will evolve based on the perceived status of different out-groups (e.g., whether they are perceived to be high status or low status).The proposed research will therefore help establish whether cumulative cultural evolution leads to the unintentional but inevitable formation of stereotypes, whose content is largely determined by the shared biases of perceivers rather than the actual properties of the groups themselves.