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Clément, Fabrice
Nom
Clément, Fabrice
Affiliation principale
Fonction
Professeur ordinaire
Email
fabrice.clement@unine.ch
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- PublicationAccès libreFrom learning about social categories to holding stereotypes. Investigating the acquisition of stereotypes in childhood and their effects on adults’ information processing(2023-07-20)
; Assuming that boys are better at math than girls, expecting that Swiss people love to eat chocolate, or inferring that senior citizens are not at ease with new technologies, all reflect stereotypical expectations about specific social categories. The term “stereotype” refers to shared sets of expectancies about the likely personality, behaviors, preferences, or physical features of social category members. From a cognitive perspective, stereotypes are energy saving devices – mental shortcuts – that allow perceivers to spare processing costs when navigating their complex social environment. Yet, inferring people’s preferences, behaviors, or personality from their category membership can also lead to incorrect predictions, to offensive assumptions, or even to discriminatory behaviors. The present dissertation aims to shed light on the mechanisms by which we form expectations about social categories, and how these expectations impact information processing. Specifically, the first part of this dissertation provides a developmental perspective on how children learn about social categories. It specifically examines how children learn to make inferences about social categories, and the conditions under which children start attributing properties to social category members. The second part of this dissertation turns to the resulting stereotypes that adults hold about social categories, and how these stereotypes modulate information processing. This part focuses on the mental processes that underlie stereotyping and assesses how the processing of written texts is affected by items that confirm versus contradict stereotypical expectations. Together, this dissertation provides a cognitive and developmental perspective on the acquisition of stereotypes and their later effects on information processing. In doing so, this dissertation will hopefully bring a better comprehension of the foundational cognitive processes that underlie stereotyping and its consequences.