On the (dis-)confirmability of stereotypic attributes

✍ Scribed by Anne Maass; Francesca Montalcini; Elisa Biciotti

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 206 KB
• Volume: 28
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0046-2772
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0992(199805/06)28:3<383::aid-ejsp870>3.0.co;2-q

✦ Synopsis

Two experiments investigated the linguistic abstractness and con®rmability of elements contained in ingroup and outgroup stereotypes. The ®rst experiment shows that positive elements of the ingroup stereotype (Italians) and negative elements of the outgroup stereotype (Jews, Germans) tended to be particularly abstract. Also, negative elements contained in the outgroup stereotypes required relatively little evidence to be considered true' but much discon®rming evidence to be rejected as false'. No such bias emerged for ingroup stereotypes. The second experiment compared the abstraction of four outgroup stereotypes (Jews, Blacks, homosexuals, career women) ®nding the greatest abstraction for the oldest stereotype (Jews), and least abstraction for the most recent stereotype (career women) with the remaining two groups (Blacks, homosexuals) occupying an intermediate position. Results are interpreted as suggesting that stereotypes may become more abstract over time as they lose the concrete elements that are easier to discon®rm while maintaining the abstract elements that are more resistant to change.