Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660, USA.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2011 Aug;101(2):321-36. doi: 10.1037/a0023153.
In the face of prejudice against an ingroup, common ground for communication exists when people use similar social categories to understand the situation. Three studies tested the hypothesis that describing perceptions of prejudice can fundamentally change those perceptions because communicators account for the common ground in line with conversational norms. When women (Study 1), African Americans (Study 2), and Americans (Study 3) simply thought about suspected prejudice against their ingroup, categorization guided their perceptions: Participants assimilated their views of the prejudiced event toward the perceptions of ingroup members but contrasted away from the perceptions of outgroup members. Conversely, when participants described their perceptions, they contrasted away from the given category information and actually arrived at the opposite perceptions as those who merely thought about the prejudiced event. Study 3 identified an important qualification of these effects by showing that they were obtained only when participants could assume their audience was familiar with the common ground. Implications are discussed for understanding the role of communication in facilitating and inhibiting collective action about prejudice.
面对群体偏见，当人们使用相似的社会类别来理解情况时，就存在沟通的共同点。三项研究检验了这样一种假设，即描述对偏见的看法可以从根本上改变这些看法，因为沟通者会根据对话规范考虑共同点。当女性（研究 1）、非裔美国人（研究 2）和美国人（研究 3）只是想到对他们群体的偏见时，分类指导了他们的看法：参与者将他们对有偏见事件的看法同化到群体成员的看法中，但与群体外成员的看法形成对比。相反，当参与者描述他们的看法时，他们与给定的类别信息形成对比，实际上得出了与仅仅思考有偏见事件的人相反的看法。研究 3 通过表明这些影响只有在参与者可以假设他们的听众熟悉共同点时才会产生，从而确定了这些影响的一个重要限制条件。讨论了这些影响对理解沟通在促进和抑制关于偏见的集体行动中的作用的意义。
