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Leveraging cultural narratives to promote trait inferences rather than stereotype activation during person perception
Author(s) -
Harris Lasana T.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
social and personality psychology compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.699
H-Index - 53
ISSN - 1751-9004
DOI - 10.1111/spc3.12598
Subject(s) - psychology , stereotype (uml) , categorization , prejudice (legal term) , social cognition , social psychology , trait , social perception , cognition , cognitive psychology , perception , narrative , salient , cognitive bias , philosophy , linguistics , neuroscience , computer science , programming language , epistemology , artificial intelligence
Stereotypes are cognitive constructs that make available a suite of traits and behaviors relevant to a social target. However, they also fuel social biases against social targets based on their perceived social group membership. Traditional approaches to social bias reduction focus primarily on the affective component—prejudice—on cognitive control as a regulatory tool, and on changing stereotype content. Here, I focus instead on changing the initial categorization processes, moving away from stereotype activation to trait inferences during person perception. Specifically, I argue that traits, another cognitive construct, can be promoted instead as the default social categorization. This can occur if cultural narratives highlight behavior rather than social groups, making trait inferences more salient as an initial categorization process rather than stereotype activation.