University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Pers Soc Psychol Rev. 2023 Nov;27(4):393-413. doi: 10.1177/10888683231172255. Epub 2023 May 22.
Social categories like race and gender often give rise to stereotypes and prejudice, and a great deal of research has focused on how motivations influence these biased beliefs. Here, we focus on potential biases in how these categories are even formed in the first place, suggesting that motivations can influence the very categories people use to group others. We propose that motivations to share schemas with other people and to gain resources shape people's attention to dimensions like race, gender, and age in different contexts. Specifically, people will pay attention to dimensions to the degree that the conclusions produced from using those dimensions align with their motivations. Overall, we suggest that simply examining the downstream effects of social categorization like stereotyping and prejudice is not enough, and that research should look earlier in the process at how and when we form the categories on which those stereotypes are based.
社会类别，如种族和性别，往往会产生刻板印象和偏见，大量研究集中在动机如何影响这些有偏见的信念。在这里，我们关注的是这些类别最初是如何形成的潜在偏见，表明动机可以影响人们用来对他人进行分组的类别。我们提出，与他人分享图式和获取资源的动机塑造了人们在不同情境下对种族、性别和年龄等维度的注意力。具体来说，人们会关注那些与他们的动机一致的维度，这些维度可以得出结论。总的来说，我们认为仅仅检查刻板印象和偏见等社会分类的下游影响是不够的，研究应该更早地关注我们是如何以及何时形成基于这些刻板印象的类别。
