Communicating Stereotype-Relevant Information: Is Factual Information Subject to the Same Communication Biases as Fictional Information?

• Published in: Personality & social psychology bulletin Vol. 35; no. 7; pp. 836 - 852
• Main Authors: Goodman, Ruth L., Webb, Thomas L., Stewart, Andrew J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.07.2009; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Adult; Attitude; Bias; Communication; Experiments; Female; Heroin; Humans; Information Dissemination - methods; Linguistics; Male; Narration; Narratives; Newspapers as Topic; Shareholder relations; Social Behavior; Social Identification; Social Perception; Stereotypes; Stereotyping; linguistic abstraction; stereotypes; newspaper articles; linguistic expectancy bias; communication

Factual information is more frequently read and discussed than fictional information. However, research on the role of communication in shaping stereotypes has focused almost exclusively on fictional narratives. In Experiments 1 and 2 a newspaper article containing information about heroin users was...