Stereotyping and Sampling Biases in Intergroup Perception

Abstract

In order for language to achieve its communicative function, it is essential that a given symbol be able to evoke a similar psychological representation across diverse individuals. Although many symbols or words succeed in eliciting highly similar meanings among different people, there is an important domain in which the discrepancies in meanings are at least as important as the similarities, and that is in the perception of the characteristics of human groups.