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Learning about Groups: The Self and Social Networks in the Emergence of Stereotypes

par Eberlen, Julia
Président du jury Destrebecqz, Arnaud
Promoteur Klein, Olivier
Co-Promoteur Gagliolo, Matteo
Publication Non publié, 2020-05-20

Thèse de doctorat

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Résumé :

Stereotypes are often considered to exist as a consequence of categorizing people into different groups, our belonging (or not) to the group, and our exposure to perceived covariation between group member’s physical and psychological characteristics However, the process of stereotype learning itself is not always taken into account. In my thesis, I hypothesized that people will categorize artificial social stimuli into groups, and learn to associate them with descriptions compatible with stereotype content, even if they are not actively made aware of such a connection. This learning process is influenced by the individuals process on the one, and its social environment on the other. First, we find that people learn stereotypes in the absence of explicit information about the existence of social outgroups. For stimuli with equal baseline valence, the contrast between perceived stereotypes was stronger when the stereotypical information was more distinctive for one social group over the other. When baseline valence was not the same, stereotype-consistent information increased this difference while non-stereotypical information led to less stereotypical differentiation between the groups.Second, when participants are themselves part of a group, stereotype consistent information is readily integrated into the group impression. For stereotype inconsistent information, and within the context of experimentally induced group belonging, participants did learn the (counter) stereotypical information, but the identification with the group decreased. Finally, the focus is again on outgroup stereotype learning, but this time in the context of small social networks. The aim here was to isolate network structure from social interaction per se and investigate whether structure alone influences the emergence of stereotypes. People learned from each other in these distinct network configurations, i.e., in a fully connected network or a star network. Different from the other studies, participants decided themselves how a member of our experimental social groups was presented to other participants. This way, we could observe whether stereotypes emerge as a consequence of social interaction, restricted by their network ties. We found that participants will learn outgroup stereotypes consistent with the covariation between group stimuli and description to which they were exposed in their respective network. However, the network structure itself does not contribute to stereotype learning or emergence.