The formation of stereotyoes through cumulative cultural transmission Experimental data

These are data from the two primary dependent measures from my ESRC grant examining how novel lab-based stereotypes form via a process of cumulative cultural evolution. The data were collected from undergraduate participants who were tested individually. Each participant was a single 'generation' within a 'diffusion chain' of seven generations. Participants were asked to try and learn some information about some novel social targets. The responses each participant produced during a test phase were used as the learning materials for the next participant (i.e., generation). The dependent measures of interest were the accuracy with which people completed the task and the amount of structure that was present in their responses. We were interested in whether a stereotype-like categorical structure would develop as information was passed down the chains and whether this would result in associated increases in accuracy.