Influence of Impression-Management Goals on the Emerging Contents of Group Stereotypes: Support for a Social-Evolutionary Process

Why do consensually shared group stereotypes have the contents that they do? A social-evolutionary perspective suggests that the emergent contents of stereotypes are influenced by the contents of interpersonal communications, which themselves may be influenced by individuals’ motives and goals. Three experiments tested hypotheses drawn from this perspective. In all experiments, participants in dyads read information describing members of groups about which they held no previous beliefs, and they communicated with each other about that information. In Experiment 1, a manipulation of the contents of interpersonal communication influenced the content of stereotypes formed. In Experiments 2 and 3, a manipulation of participants’ impression-management goals influenced the contents of communication and also influenced the eventual content of stereotypes. Additional results from Experiments 2 and 3 provided evidence specifically implicating the role of actual communication in determining stereotype content. These results have implications for the formation of group stereotypes and the origins of cultural beliefs in general.