Stereotypes in the communication and translation of person impressions

Abstract

Communications about other people may be shaped by group stereotypes. This study examined how racial stereotypes about academic performance affected communicators’ descriptions of individuals and interpreters’ “decoding” of those descriptions. Participants assigned to a “communicator” role viewed a college transcript of a Black or White student, and communicated their impressions to a peer. These communications were more positive when the target was Black than White. However, yoked “interpreters” back-translated the communications to mean that the Black student had an objectively worse record than the White student, an effect that did not emerge among interpreters blind to the student’s race or among no communication controls. Communicators also mis-remembered the Black student’s record as worse than the White student’s. These effects suggest the use of “shifting standards” to communicate about Blacks and Whites and to decode subjective evaluations, an interactive process that may contribute to stereotype maintenance.