Showing papers by "Bernadette Park published in 1993"
TL;DR: Three forms of stereotype inaccuracy are identified: stereotypic inaccuracy, valence inaccurate, and dispersion inaccuracy; the implications of each form are discussed, along with how each can be assessed using a full-accuracy design.
Abstract: A perennial issue in the study of social stereotypes concerns their accuracy. Yet, there is no clear concept of the various ways in which stereotypes may be accurate or inaccurate and how one would assess their accuracy. This article is designed to rectify this situation. Three forms of stereotype inaccuracy are identified: stereotypic inaccuracy, valence inaccuracy, and dispersion inaccuracy. The implications of each form are discussed, along with how each can be assessed using a full-accuracy design. Past research that has attempted to examine stereotype accuracy is reviewed, and new data on the issue are presented. Although of perennial interest, the theoretical and methodological difficulties of assessing stereotype accuracy are substantial. The goal in this article is to alert the researcher to these difficulties and point toward their solution.
494 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose an alternative model of social category representation that suggests people use mental frequency distributions to remember and organize instances along an attribute dimension, and explore the implications of this model for explaining differences in perceived group variability, including the out-group homogeneity effect.
Abstract: We propose an alternative model of social category representation that suggests people use mental frequency distributions to remember and organize instances along an attribute dimension. We then explore the implications of this model for explaining differences in perceived group variability, including the out-group homogeneity effect. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that using a greater number of categories to represent a dimension results in greater perceived variability of a group along that dimension. Experiment 2 shows that subjects spontaneously generate more subgroups (that is, a greater number of categories) along an attribute dimension when judging the in-group as compared to the out-group. Taken together, these experiments demonstrate how the use of a frequency distribution model might account for out-group homogeneity. If subjects use a frequency distribution to represent group members along a dimension, and they divide out-groups into a fewer number of categories than in-groups, then out-groups...
31 citations