Abstract
All people share knowledge of cultural stereotypes of social groups—but what are the origins of these stereotypes? We examined whether stereotypes form spontaneously as information is repeatedly passed from person to person. As information about novel social targets was passed down a chain of individuals, what initially began as a set of random associations evolved into a system that was simplified and categorically structured. Over time, novel stereotypes emerged that not only were increasingly learnable but also allowed generalizations to be made about previously unseen social targets. By illuminating how cognitive and social factors influence how stereotypes form and change, these findings show how stereotypes might naturally evolve or be manipulated.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1777-1786 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Psychological Science |
Volume | 25 |
Issue number | 9 |
Early online date | 22 Jul 2014 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Sept 2014 |
Bibliographical note
AcknowledgementsWe thank Stephan Lewandowsky and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
Funding
The research was supported by an award from the Economic and Social Research Council (RES-061-25-0522) to D. Martin.
Supplemental Material
Additional supporting information may be found at http://pss.sagepub.com/content/by/supplemental-data
Keywords
- stereotypes
- stereotype information
- cultural evolution
- social cognition
- person perception
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The formation of stereotyoes through cumulative cultural transmission Experimental data
Martin, D. (Creator), UK Data Service, 30 Jun 2015
DOI: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-851840 , http://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/851840/2/ESI0106881_Data_Archive.sav and 5 more links, http://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/851840/1/Description_of_ESI0106881_Data_Archive.docx, http://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/851840/5/Consent_Form_ESI0106881.docx, http://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/851840/6/Information_Sheet_ESI0106881.docx, http://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/851840/4/ReadMe.txt, http://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/851840/4/ReadMe.txt (show fewer)
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