Prejudice and Stereotyping in Everyday Communication

Ruscher, Janet B.

doi:10.1016/s0065-2601(08)60385-8

Cited by 71 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…This would suggest that inconsistent information is communicated more than consistent information for its greater informativeness, although it has also been argued that stereotype-consistent information may be more informative than inconsistent information. Ruscher (1998) argued that although a group stereotype may be shared, any specific instance of how an individual fits a stereotype is new information, and therefore the new stereotype-consistent information may be seen to be informative in this sense.…”

Section: Communication Context: the Role Of Shared Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In dyadic conversation, communicators spend more time discussing stereotypeconsistent information, expressing agreement with stereotypeconsistent statements, and focusing questions and discussion on stereotype-consistent information (see Ruscher, 1998, for a review). When stereotype-relevant stories are passed along a chain of communicators, a stereotype consistency bias emerges in the communicated message as stereotype-consistent information is retained and inconsistent information left out (see Kashima, et al, 2007, for a review).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Stereotypes help people connect with others in the community: A situated functional analysis of the stereotype consistency bias in communication.

Clark

Kashima

2007

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

136

127

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Communicators tend to share more stereotype-consistent than stereotype-inconsistent information. The authors propose and test a situated functional model of this stereotype consistency bias: Stereotypeconsistent and inconsistent information differentially serve 2 central functions of communicationsharing information and regulating relationships; depending on the communication context, information seen to serve these different functions better is more likely communicated. Results showed that stereotype-consistent information is perceived as more socially connective but less informative than inconsistent information, and when the stereotype is perceived to be highly shared in the community, more stereotype-consistent than inconsistent information is communicated due to its greater social connectivity function. These results highlight the need to examine communication as a dynamic and situated social activity.Keywords: stereotype consistency bias, stereotype communication, informativeness, social connectivity, situated-functional modelThe stereotype consistency bias is the tendency to communicate more stereotype-consistent information than stereotypeinconsistent information in a message, and it has been well established in the stereotype communication literature (see Kashima, Klein, & Clark, 2007, for a review). In dyadic conversation, communicators spend more time discussing stereotypeconsistent information, expressing agreement with stereotypeconsistent statements, and focusing questions and discussion on stereotype-consistent information (see Ruscher, 1998, for a review). When stereotype-relevant stories are passed along a chain of communicators, a stereotype consistency bias emerges in the communicated message as stereotype-consistent information is retained and inconsistent information left out (see Kashima, et al., 2007, for a review).However, a central question remains: Why should stereotypeconsistent information have this communicative advantage over stereotype-inconsistent information? The aim of this research was to test a situated functional account of the production of a stereotype consistency bias in particular contexts. In this view, communication is a socially situated activity (Smith & Semin, 2004) Informational and Relational Functions of CommunicationCommunication serves at least two central functions, sharing novel information and the regulation of social relationships. The first central function is that of information sharing. It is widely accepted that information is transmitted to inform people about things that they do not already know, thus adding to the existing common ground. In order to ensure that their message to a communication partner is optimally informative, communicators are likely to attend to the potentially novel features of the information

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Section: Communication Context: the Role Of Shared Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Stereotypes help people connect with others in the community: A situated functional analysis of the stereotype consistency bias in communication.

Clark

Kashima

2007

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

136

127

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Over time, this process of mutual tuning and sayingis-believing may well produce group polarization regarding the stereotype (cf. Brauer et al, 2001;Ruscher, 1998). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communication and Group Perception: Extending the `Saying is Believing' Effect

Hausmann

Levine

Higgins

2008

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

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Section: Stereotypes and Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They are then asked to discuss their impressions of the target. The results of content analyses of these dyadic conversations typically demonstrated more SC than SI utterances, both in terms of the number of comments and their duration (see Ruscher, 1998Ruscher, , 2001.The fi ndings by Ruscher and her colleagues are important because they have demonstrated that dyadic conversations are likely to concentrate on SC parts of stimulus information of an individual group member. However, a number of qualifi cations should be noted.…”

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confidence: 97%

Stereotypes as Shared Beliefs: Effects of Group Identity on Dyadic Conversations

Karasawa

Asai

Tanabe

2007

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

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Two experiments examined the infl uence of stereotypes on dyadic conversations. Undergraduate students listened to a recorded interview of a student who was described as either a member of their in-group or of an out-group. The interview contained stereotypeconsistent (SC) and stereotype-inconsistent (SI) descriptions of each group. Participants' conversations about the stimulus person were content-analyzed. One most consistent result was that for the out-group target, participants made more SI than SC utterances and spent more time discussing SI information. The difference between SC and SI utterances disappeared (Study 2) or was reversed (Study 1) for the in-group target. These patterns were observed particularly when the stimulus information contained a balanced combination of SC and SI characteristics. Furthermore, the stereotypicality of the conversations was related not only to the participant's own judgments but also to the partner's judgments. The signifi cance of studying stereotypes as collectively shared intergroup attitudes is discussed.keywords conversation, group identity, shared cognition, stereotype-consistent and inconsistent Author's note Address correspondence to Minoru Karasawa, Department of Psychology, School of Informatics and Sciences, Nagoya University, Nagoya 464-8601, Japan [email: mkarasawa@nagoya-u Stereotypic beliefs concerning social groups and categories often entail a high level of consensus in their contents. Likely sources of this concordance include social learning from parents, peers, and mass media. The collectively shared nature exemplifies the significance of stereotypes and prejudices not merely as products of intra-individual processes (e.g. effects of salience, categorization, and biased information processing) but also as phenomena at the intergroup level (Oakes, Haslam, & Turner, 1994). In recent years, researchers from different perspectives, including the social cognition approach (e.g. Gardner, 1994;Stangor & Schaller, 1996), the social identity perspective (e.g. Haslam et al., 1996), and communication research (e.g. Ruscher, 2001) have begun to pay attention to the status of stereotypes as collectively shared Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 10(4)516 reality (Hardin & Higgins, 1996;Kashima, 2000;Lyons & Kashima, 2003).In the process of social learning of stereotypes, communication without doubt plays a critical role. For instance, conversations with family members and friends often contain stereotypic remarks which will in turn facilitate the formation and maintenance of collectively shared representations (e.g. Ruscher, 2001;Van Dijk, 1987). The main purpose of the present study was to investigate how stereotypic expectations infl uence conversations about a member of a group. Specifi cally, we focused on how people discuss stereotype-consistent (SC) and stereotypeinconsistent (SI) information in dyadic conversations. The signifi cance of examining SC and SI information lies in the fact that these two kinds of information appear to be related, respectively,...

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Prejudice and Stereotyping in Everyday Communication

Cited by 71 publications

References 77 publications

Stereotypes help people connect with others in the community: A situated functional analysis of the stereotype consistency bias in communication.

Stereotypes help people connect with others in the community: A situated functional analysis of the stereotype consistency bias in communication.

Communication and Group Perception: Extending the `Saying is Believing' Effect

Stereotypes as Shared Beliefs: Effects of Group Identity on Dyadic Conversations

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