Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1001NK, The Netherlands.
Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Division of Psychology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm 17177, Sweden.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024 Nov 5;121(45):e2414518121. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2414518121. Epub 2024 Nov 1.
How are societal stereotypes transmitted to individual-level group preferences? We propose that exposure to a stereotype, regardless of whether one agrees with it, can shape how one experiences and learns from interactions with members of the stereotyped group, such that it induces individual-level prejudice-a process involving the interplay of semantic knowledge and instrumental learning. In a series of experiments, participants interacted with players from two groups, described with either positive or negative stereotypes, in a reinforcement learning (RL) task presented as a money-sharing game. Although players' actual sharing rates were equated between groups, participants formed more positive reward associations with players from positively stereotyped than negatively stereotyped groups. This effect persisted even when stereotypes were described as unreliable and participants were instructed to ignore them. Computational modeling revealed that this preference was due to stereotype effects on priors regarding group members' behavior as well as the learning rates through which reward associations were updated in response to player feedback. We then show that these stereotype-induced preferences, once formed, spread unwittingly to others who observe these interactions, illustrating a pathway through which stereotypes may be transmitted and propagated between society and individuals. By identifying a mechanism through which stereotype knowledge can bypass explicit beliefs to induce prejudice, via the interplay of semantic and instrumental learning processes, these findings illuminate the impact of stereotype messages on the formation and propagation of individual-level prejudice.
社会刻板印象是如何传递到个人层面的群体偏好的？我们提出，无论个人是否同意刻板印象，接触刻板印象都可以影响个人与刻板印象群体成员互动时的体验和学习方式，从而导致个人层面的偏见——这一过程涉及语义知识和工具性学习的相互作用。在一系列实验中，参与者在强化学习（RL）任务中与来自两个群体的玩家进行互动，这些群体被描述为具有积极或消极的刻板印象。在作为金钱分享游戏呈现的 RL 任务中，尽管两组玩家的实际分享率是相等的，但参与者与来自被积极刻板印象描述的玩家相比，与来自被消极刻板印象描述的玩家形成了更积极的奖励联想。即使将刻板印象描述为不可靠，并且指示参与者忽略它们，这种效应仍然存在。计算建模表明，这种偏好是由于刻板印象对群体成员行为的先验的影响，以及通过这些先验来更新奖励联想以响应玩家反馈的学习率。然后，我们表明，一旦形成这些刻板印象诱导的偏好，就会无意识地传播给观察这些互动的其他人，这说明了刻板印象可能在社会和个人之间传播和传播的途径。通过确定一种机制，即刻板印象知识如何通过语义和工具性学习过程的相互作用绕过明确的信念来引发偏见，这些发现阐明了刻板印象信息对个人层面偏见的形成和传播的影响。
