On Judgments of Dispersion and Stereotypicality:How They Relate to Ethnicity and Influence Ethnic Categorization

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European American (EA) college students (n = 108), Asian American (AA) college students (n = 99), and college students from other minority groups (n = 51) completed measures of dispersion and stereotypicality pertaining to both AA and EA student populations. Analyses revealed reliable main effects for ethnicity that were generally consistent with self-categorization theory. On the dispersion measure, both minority groups perceived both AA and EA populations as more homogeneous than EA participants did, and on the stereotypicality measure minorities generally tended to attribute relatively more stereotypic traits than EA participants did. Minorities were also generally more likely to believe that an individual described in stereotypic terms was a member of the group to which the stereotype applied. Additional analyses examined the relation between dispersion and stereotypicality ratings and the estimated probability that descriptions representative of AAs and EAs actually described individuals from those respective groups. Estimated probabilities were positively related to participants' estimations of the mean base rate of these stereotypic traits among the target group. Contrary to a normative standard, however, they were not negatively related to the estimated base rates of these same traits among the other ethnic group, which was also represented in the population from which the target person was drawn.