Divergence and Convergence across Presumed and Actual Stereotypes

Abstract

Stereotypes are foundational to social life, with warmth and competence key to views of social groups. Some theoretical and empirical work on stereotypes focuses on personal “first-order” beliefs about social groups. Other work focuses on perceptions of a culture’s stereotypes, or “generalized second-order” beliefs. Scholars differ in which they consider to have greater impact or whether they think they are unique or represent the same underlying belief. In this visualization, I present data from a large online survey experiment ( N = 1,045) in which participants reported either first-order or generalized second-order stereotypes about 19 different social groups. For the majority of stereotypes measured, the results differ across the two methods, with perceptions of culture more pessimistic than people’s actual first-order beliefs would suggest. That is, people tend to assume that others hold more negative stereotypes than they actually do, and this is especially pronounced for negatively viewed social groups.