Group discussion amplifies shared biased perceptions into consensual stereotypes

Evidence

Hence, people will be motivated to exchange information with other ingroup members about outgroups. And in such interactions, what observations and beliefs are likely to emerge? Group discussions tend to be dominated by shared information – i.e., knowledge available to many members of a group – rather than by unshared information, or the idiosyncratic bits of knowledge possessed by individual people (Larson, Foster-Fishman, & Keys, 1994). Thus, if many individuals have projected specific traits onto an outgroup, those common perceptions are likely to be exchanged and discussed. As a result, stereotypes initially constructed at the level of the individual could be further developed and elaborated at the group level. Furthermore, research by Lambert et al. (2003) shows that when people think about groups in the presence (or even imagined presence) of others, the likelihood that stereotypes associated with those groups will come to mind and be expressed significantly increases. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2368

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to group polarization and shared-information bias literature; also to the common-knowledge effects familiar from social psychology courses.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 2368