Transmission of societal stereotypes to individual-level prejudice through instrumental learning.

ABSTRACT: 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 group

SUBMITTER: Schultner DT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11551433 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature