Traditional explanations for stereotypes assume that they result from deficits in humans (ingroup-favoring motives, cognitive biases) or their environments (majority advantages, real group differences). An alternative explanation recently proposed that stereotypes can emerge when exploration is costly. Even optimal decision makers in an ideal environment can inadvertently form incorrect impressions from arbitrary encounters. However, all these existing theories essentially describe shortcuts that fail to explain the multidimensionality of stereotypes. Stereotypes of social groups have a canonical multidimensional structure, organized along dimensions of warmth and competence. We show that these dimensions and the associated stereotypes can result from feature-based exploration: When individuals make self-interested decisions based on past experiences in an environment where exploring new options carries an implicit cost and when these options share similar attributes, they are more likely to separate groups along multiple dimensions. We formalize this theory via the contextual multiarmed bandit problem, use the resulting model to generate testable predictions, and evaluate those predictions against human behavior. We evaluate this process in incentivized decisions involving as many as 20 real jobs and successfully recover the classic dimensions of warmth and competence. Further experiments show that intervening on the cost of exploration effectively mitigates bias, further demonstrating that exploration cost per se is the operating variable. Future diversity interventions may consider how to reduce exploration cost, in ways that parallel our manipulations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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代价高昂的探索会产生带有热情和能力维度的刻板印象。


对刻板印象的传统解释假设它们是由人类（偏向内群体的动机、认知偏差）或其环境（多数优势、真正的群体差异）的缺陷造成的。最近提出的另一种解释是，当勘探成本高昂时，就会出现刻板印象。即使是理想环境中的最佳决策者，也可能因随意的相遇而无意中形成不正确的印象。然而，所有这些现有的理论本质上都描述了无法解释刻板印象的多维性的捷径。社会群体的刻板印象具有典型的多维结构，按照温暖和能力的维度进行组织。我们表明，这些维度和相关的刻板印象可能是基于特征的探索的结果：当个人在探索新选项会带来隐性成本的环境中根据过去的经验做出自利的决定时，当这些选项具有相似的属性时，他们更有可能沿多个维度划分群体。我们通过上下文多臂老虎机问题将这一理论正式化，使用生成的模型生成可测试的预测，并根据人类行为评估这些预测。我们在涉及多达 20 个实际工作的激励性决策中评估这一过程，并成功恢复了热情和能力的传统维度。进一步的实验表明，干预勘探成本可以有效地减轻偏差，进一步证明勘探成本本身是操作变量。未来的多元化干预措施可能会考虑如何以与我们的操作平行的方式降低勘探成本。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 （c） 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。