Sympathy or Scorn? Stereotype Use as a Response to Narratives of Injustice

• In Event: 606 - Section on Social Psychology Roundtable Session (co-sponsored with Section on Sociology of Emotions)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Racism and Stereotypes

Abstract

While recent work has well documented the troubling consequences associated with the enforcement and internalization of negative stereotypes (Pager et al 2009; Correll et al 2007; Steele 1997), less work has been done to account for their origin and durability (Link and Phelan 2001). With this study we set out to examine one of the ways in which negative stereotypes may become culturally entrenched. Combining insights from research on response to injustice (Hegtvedt and Johnson 2000) and cultural transmission (Kashima and Yeung 2010), we initially propose that negative status-based stereotypes are spread and reinforced as they provide a readily available means to justify others’ experience of injustice. We test this hypothesis using a cultural transmission study, in which participants were assigned to read and retell a narrative where a protagonist experiences a negative outcome that either was, or was not, the result of unjust treatment. Results indicate—contrary to our initial hypothesis—that participants tended to use more stereotype-consistent information when the protagonists’ negative outcome was not the result of (traditionally defined) unjust treatment. Instead, supplementary analyses suggest that by providing a visible, external cause of the protagonist’s misfortune, information regarding individual-level unjust treatment may actually serve to temper negative stereotype use. This unexpected finding and its implications for future research are explored in the discussion section.

Authors

• M.B. Fallin Hunzaker, Duke University

• Marcus Mann, Duke University