Maintaining Cultural Stereotypes in the Serial Reproduction of Narratives

TLDR

Prior research indicates that individuals remember stereotype‑inconsistent information better than stereotype‑consistent information, whereas collective memory tends to preserve stereotype‑consistent content, supporting the stability of cultural stereotypes. The study examined how individual and collective remembering differ in the transmission of stereotype‑relevant narratives. The experiment used a gender‑stereotype‑relevant story transmitted through five‑person communication chains. While early chain participants reproduced more stereotype‑inconsistent information, by the end of the chains stereotype‑consistent information was retained better overall.

Abstract

Recent social cognition research showed that the individual often recalls stereotype-inconsistent (SI) information better than stereotype-consistent (SC) information. By contrast, classical studies in social psychology suggest that SC information is retained well in the collective remembering where a number of individuals are involved in the reproduction of stories. In the present experiment, individual and collective remembering were examined. A story about a man and a woman who exhibited gender-stereotype-relevant behaviors was transmitted through five-person communication chains. Although participants in earlier positions of the chains reproduced SI information more than SC information under some circumstances, SC information was retained better than SI information toward the end of the chains regardless. The stability of cultural stereotypes was discussed in terms of the tendency for collective information processing to favor the retention of information shared among individuals.