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Project

When you say „Men are good at science”, do I hear you say that women are not? Consequences of comparative formats in messages about social groups

Stereotypes are beliefs about social groups and their differences from other groups, such as the belief that old people are wiser than young people or that women are more emotional than men. While stereotypes can help us make sense of a complex world, understand others better, and often make it easier to interact with strangers, they can also distort perceptions of oneself and others, disadvantage groups, and enhance prejudice and inequality. They mostly spread through verbal communication, including expressions of group differences. Accordingly, efforts to change stereotypes often include expressions of group similarities. This dissertation examined the potential consequences of how group differences and similarities can be expressed. We call these differences in expression comparative formats.

The first part of this dissertation focused on the question “Will people judge and interpret the statement ‘Men are brave’ (implicit differences) in the same way as the statement ‘Men are braver than women’ (explicit differences)?” Chapters 2 and 3 showed that this is not the case. Readers did not find implicit and explicit differences equally true or acceptable, they tended to interpret the statements differently, and perceived communicators differently. Both metacognitive processes (such as processing fluency) and normative processes (such as adherence to a positivity norm) seemed responsible for these comparative format effects. In the case of intuitive judgments of truth and social acceptability, the mechanism causing comparative format effects tended to vary with the groups compared. In the case of interpretations of differences, Chapter 3 demonstrates how explicitly saying that two groups are different is interpreted as implying greater similarity between the groups than implicit differences that do not mention a second group.

The second part of this dissertation tried to answer the question “Will statements like ‘Men are as emotional as women’ (directional similarities) be as convincing as statements like ‘Men and women are equally emotional’ (non-directional similarities)?” This was not the case. Chapter 4 shows how non-directional similarity statements reduced gender stereotypical beliefs more than directional similarity statements. Moreover, directional statements enhanced implicit associations in line with the stereotype, which shows that they can backfire.

This dissertation showed that comparative formats matter. It helps clarify the role of verbal communication in stereotype maintenance and stereotype change and thus contributes to the social psychology of stereotyping.

Date:1 Oct 2019 →  16 Feb 2024
Keywords:Stereotypes, Social comparison, Person perception, Verbal communication, Social cognition
Disciplines:Social perception and cognition, Communication sciences not elsewhere classified
Project type:PhD project