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Motivated Categories: Social Structures Shape the Construction of Social Categories Through Attentional Mechanisms

Social categorization is often framed as the antecedent to stereotyping, with perceivers rationally sorting the social world on the basis of perceptually salient categories before applying biased or motivated beliefs about those categories. Here, we instead suggest that the construction of social ca...

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Autores principales: Allidina, Suraiya, Cunningham, William A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10559649/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37212415
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10888683231172255
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author Allidina, Suraiya
Cunningham, William A.
author_facet Allidina, Suraiya
Cunningham, William A.
author_sort Allidina, Suraiya
collection PubMed
description Social categorization is often framed as the antecedent to stereotyping, with perceivers rationally sorting the social world on the basis of perceptually salient categories before applying biased or motivated beliefs about those categories. Here, we instead suggest that the construction of social categories by individuals is itself subject to motivational influences, such that perceivers will attend to a given dimension of social categorization (e.g., race or gender) insofar as doing so fits within their motivations. Drawing from classic conceptualizations of social structure as the interplay of schemas and resources, we focus on how the motivations for shared schemas and for material benefits or resources may shape attention to social category dimensions. We outline the potential cognitive mechanisms through which these motivations may act on attention, before discussing the implications of this model for individual differences, conceptualizations of social categorization as rational information reduction, and prejudice reduction. PUBLIC ABSTRACT: Social categories like race and gender often give rise to stereotypes and prejudice, and a great deal of research has focused on how motivations influence these biased beliefs. Here, we focus on potential biases in how these categories are even formed in the first place, suggesting that motivations can influence the very categories people use to group others. We propose that motivations to share schemas with other people and to gain resources shape people’s attention to dimensions like race, gender, and age in different contexts. Specifically, people will pay attention to dimensions to the degree that the conclusions produced from using those dimensions align with their motivations. Overall, we suggest that simply examining the downstream effects of social categorization like stereotyping and prejudice is not enough, and that research should look earlier in the process at how and when we form the categories on which those stereotypes are based.
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spelling pubmed-105596492023-10-08 Motivated Categories: Social Structures Shape the Construction of Social Categories Through Attentional Mechanisms Allidina, Suraiya Cunningham, William A. Pers Soc Psychol Rev Articles Social categorization is often framed as the antecedent to stereotyping, with perceivers rationally sorting the social world on the basis of perceptually salient categories before applying biased or motivated beliefs about those categories. Here, we instead suggest that the construction of social categories by individuals is itself subject to motivational influences, such that perceivers will attend to a given dimension of social categorization (e.g., race or gender) insofar as doing so fits within their motivations. Drawing from classic conceptualizations of social structure as the interplay of schemas and resources, we focus on how the motivations for shared schemas and for material benefits or resources may shape attention to social category dimensions. We outline the potential cognitive mechanisms through which these motivations may act on attention, before discussing the implications of this model for individual differences, conceptualizations of social categorization as rational information reduction, and prejudice reduction. PUBLIC ABSTRACT: Social categories like race and gender often give rise to stereotypes and prejudice, and a great deal of research has focused on how motivations influence these biased beliefs. Here, we focus on potential biases in how these categories are even formed in the first place, suggesting that motivations can influence the very categories people use to group others. We propose that motivations to share schemas with other people and to gain resources shape people’s attention to dimensions like race, gender, and age in different contexts. Specifically, people will pay attention to dimensions to the degree that the conclusions produced from using those dimensions align with their motivations. Overall, we suggest that simply examining the downstream effects of social categorization like stereotyping and prejudice is not enough, and that research should look earlier in the process at how and when we form the categories on which those stereotypes are based. SAGE Publications 2023-05-22 2023-11 /pmc/articles/PMC10559649/ /pubmed/37212415 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10888683231172255 Text en © 2023 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Articles
Allidina, Suraiya
Cunningham, William A.
Motivated Categories: Social Structures Shape the Construction of Social Categories Through Attentional Mechanisms
title Motivated Categories: Social Structures Shape the Construction of Social Categories Through Attentional Mechanisms
title_full Motivated Categories: Social Structures Shape the Construction of Social Categories Through Attentional Mechanisms
title_fullStr Motivated Categories: Social Structures Shape the Construction of Social Categories Through Attentional Mechanisms
title_full_unstemmed Motivated Categories: Social Structures Shape the Construction of Social Categories Through Attentional Mechanisms
title_short Motivated Categories: Social Structures Shape the Construction of Social Categories Through Attentional Mechanisms
title_sort motivated categories: social structures shape the construction of social categories through attentional mechanisms
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10559649/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37212415
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10888683231172255
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