PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
People often rely on social learning-learning by observing others\' actions and outcomes-to form preferences in advance of their own direct experiences. Although typically adaptive, we investigated whether social learning may also contribute to the formation and spread of prejudice. In six experiments (n = 1550), we demonstrate that by merely observing interactions between a prejudiced actor and social group members, observers acquired the prejudices of the actor. Moreover, observers were unaware of the actors\' bias, misattributing their acquired group preferences to the behavior of group members, despite identical behavior between groups. Computational modeling revealed that this effect was due to value shaping, whereby one\'s preferences are shaped by another\'s actions toward a target, in addition to the target\'s reward feedback. These findings identify social learning as a potent mechanism of prejudice formation that operates implicitly and supports the transmission of intergroup bias.
摘要：
人们通常依靠社会学习——通过观察他人的行为和结果来学习——在自己的直接经验之前形成偏好。虽然通常是自适应的，我们调查了社会学习是否也可能导致偏见的形成和传播。在六个实验中（n=1550），我们证明，仅仅通过观察偏见的演员和社会团体成员之间的互动，观察者获得了演员的偏见。此外，观察者没有意识到演员的偏见，将他们获得的群体偏好错误地归因于群体成员的行为，尽管群体之间的行为相同。计算模型显示，这种影响是由于价值塑造，一个人的偏好是由另一个人对目标的行动决定的，除了目标的奖励反馈。这些发现将社会学习确定为偏见形成的有效机制，该机制暗中运作并支持群体间偏见的传播。
