The structure of intergroup perception: Categories and dimensions in views of ethnic groups and adjectives used in stereotype research.

Abstract

Asked 38 male and 26 female college students to sort on the basis of similarity either 50 ethnic groups or 49 adjectives often attributed to certain stereotyped groups. Measures of co-occurrence, based on the number of times 2 groups (or 2 adjectives) were put in the same category, were used as input for hierarchical clustering and multidimensional scaling. The resulting structures are interpreted in terms of selected, independently measured semantic properties. For the scaling of the groups, a 3-dimensional configuration interpreted with the significant properties dominant-subordinate, communist-noncommunist, and western culture-nonwestern culture appeared optimal. For the scaling of the adjectives, a 2-dimensional solution interpreted with the significant properties modern-backward and cooperative-competitive appeared optimal. Clustering analyses revealed 7 distinct significant clusterings of the groups corresponding to 7 of the independent properties and 5 distinct significant clusterings of the adjectives corresponding to 5 of the properties. In general, the clustering analysis appeared to provide a more adequate and meaningful representation of the group data while multidimensional scaling seemed to offer a better representation of the adjective data. (20 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)