As diversity increases, people paradoxically perceive social groups as more similar.

ABSTRACT: With globalization and immigration, societal contexts differ in sheer variety of resident social groups. Social diversity challenges individuals to think in new ways about new kinds of people and where their groups all stand, relative to each other. However, psychological science does not yet specify how human minds represent social diversity, in homogeneous or heterogenous contexts. Mental maps of the array of society's groups should differ when individuals inhabit more and less diverse ecologies. Nonetheless, predictions disagree on how they should differ. Confirmation bias suggests more diversity means more stereotype dispersion: With increased exposure, perceivers' mental maps might differentiate more among groups, so their stereotypes would spread out (disperse). In contrast, individu

SUBMITTER: Bai X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7293612 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature