Hutchison Jacqui, Cunningham Sheila J, Slessor Gillian, Urquhart James, Smith Kenny, Martin Douglas
Division of Psychology, University of Abertay.
School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen.
Cogn Sci. 2018 May;42 Suppl 1(Suppl Suppl 1):186-212. doi: 10.1111/cogs.12560. Epub 2017 Nov 2.
We use a transmission chain method to establish how context and category salience influence the formation of novel stereotypes through cumulative cultural evolution. We created novel alien targets by combining features from three category dimensions-color, movement, and shape-thereby creating social targets that were individually unique but that also shared category membership with other aliens (e.g., two aliens might be the same color and shape but move differently). At the start of the transmission chains each alien was randomly assigned attributes that described it (e.g., arrogant, caring, confident). Participants were given training on the alien-attribute assignments and were then tested on their memory for these. The alien-attribute assignments participants produced during test were used as the training materials for the next participant in the transmission chain. As information was repeatedly transmitted an increasingly simplified, learnable stereotype-like structure emerged for targets who shared the same color, such that by the end of the chains targets who shared the same color were more likely to share the same attributes (a reanalysis of data from Martin et al., which we term Experiment 1). The apparent bias toward the formation of novel stereotypes around the color category dimension was also found for objects (Experiment 2). However, when the category dimension of color was made less salient, it no longer dominated the formation of novel stereotypes (Experiment 3). The current findings suggest that context and category salience influence category dimension salience, which in turn influences the cumulative cultural evolution of information.
我们运用一种传递链方法来确定情境和类别显著性如何通过累积文化进化影响新型刻板印象的形成。我们通过组合颜色、运动和形状这三个类别维度的特征来创建新型外星目标，从而创造出个体独特但又与其他外星人具有类别归属关系的社会目标（例如，两个外星人可能颜色和形状相同，但运动方式不同）。在传递链开始时，每个外星人被随机赋予描述它的属性（例如，傲慢、体贴、自信）。参与者接受关于外星人 - 属性分配的训练，然后测试他们对这些内容的记忆。参与者在测试中产生的外星人 - 属性分配被用作传递链中下一个参与者的训练材料。随着信息的反复传递，对于具有相同颜色的目标出现了一种越来越简化、可学习的类似刻板印象的结构，以至于在传递链结束时，具有相同颜色的目标更有可能共享相同的属性（对马丁等人的数据进行重新分析，我们将其称为实验1）。在物体方面也发现了围绕颜色类别维度形成新型刻板印象的明显偏向（实验2）。然而，当颜色的类别维度变得不那么显著时，它就不再主导新型刻板印象的形成（实验3）。当前的研究结果表明，情境和类别显著性会影响类别维度显著性，进而影响信息的累积文化进化。
