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

确定群体间偏见如何影响刻板印象的形成和演变。

• 批准号: ES/N019121/1
• 负责人: Douglas Martin
• 金额: $ 37.58万
• 依托单位: University of Aberdeen
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2017 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FN019121%2F1
• 关键词: Establishing; how; intergroup; bias; influences

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.

拟议的研究将确定社会群体的成员和地位如何影响文化陈规定型观念的形成和变化。文化刻板印象是对社会类别的模板式描述，群体成员身份与拥有某些属性有关(例如，科学家是极客，苏格兰人是吝啬的，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，就会导致对少数群体成员的偏见和歧视；即使当人们驳斥陈规定型观念时，仅仅知道其内容就可能导致思想和行为上的无意识偏见。然而，面对无限复杂的社会环境，刻板印象通过有效地组织和组织社会信息，发挥着至关重要的社会认知作用。鉴于它们的普遍存在和影响力，人们对文化刻板印象是如何形成和变化的知之甚少，这或许令人惊讶。我们认为，刻板印象的形成和变化是一个累积的文化演变过程。由于人们拥有影响信息记忆和交流方式的共同偏见，当知识在人与人之间反复传递时，这些偏见的积累会导致信息内容以可预测的方式发生变化。研究表明，当信息在个体链条上传递时--有点像儿童游戏通常被称为“中国低语”或“电话”--它变得越来越简单和有条理。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没有的刻板印象般的结构。因此，在累积的文化进化过程中，即使是极少量的个人层面的偏见也可能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。我们是否认为他人与我们属于同一个社会群体(内部群体)还是属于不同的社会群体(外部群体)，都会对我们的思想和行为产生深远的影响。群体成员倾向于导致群体间的偏见，人们更有可能偏爱群体内成员，歧视群体外成员。拟议的研究将确定反复交流有关组内和组外成员的社会信息是否会导致相对积极的组内刻板印象和消极的组外刻板印象的形成。此外，拟议的研究还将确定是否有可能根据不同外部群体的感知地位(例如，他们被认为是高地位还是低地位)来预测刻板印象的内容将如何演变。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刻板印象的无意但不可避免的形成，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。

项目成果

Context and Perceptual Salience Influence the Formation of Novel Stereotypes via Cumulative Cultural Evolution.

• DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12560
• 发表时间: 2018-05
• 期刊: Cognitive science
• 影响因子: 2.5
• 作者: Hutchison J;Cunningham SJ;Slessor G;Urquhart J;Smith K;Martin D
• 通讯作者: Martin D

How societal stereotypes might form and evolve via cumulative cultural evolution

社会刻板印象如何通过累积的文化进化而形成和演变

• DOI: 10.1111/spc3.12338
• 发表时间: 2017
• 期刊: Social and Personality Psychology Compass
• 影响因子: 4.6
• 作者: Martin D