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.Allport andPostman reported that the message was changed in more highly motivatedways (highly motivated assimilation) to reflect the self-interest or specialinterests of the participants.In addition, the changes in the reproductionsreflected the prejudices of the participants.In the original stimulus of oneexperiment a White man was holding a razor; however, in the final repro-ductions in more than half of the chains, a Black man was reported to beholding the razor.Allport and Postman argued that changes such as these,which reflect the view that Black men are more likely to carry a weaponthan White men, were motivated by the prejudices held by the predomi-nantly White participants.Although Allport and Postman explained theirfindings using different terms than those of Bartlett (1932), the results arecompatible with Bartlett s findings.Reproductions grew shorter and moreconventional with peculiarities omitted.Conventionalization is evident inAllport and Postman s findings.In the decade following Allport and Post-man s (1948) rumor work, several papers reported research investigatinghow personal interest in the content influences the transmission of rumors(e.g., Higham, 1951; Zaidi, 1958).It is interesting to note that the leveling, or information loss, found byAllport and Postman may be better explained as a consequence of commu-nication rather than due to memory loss.Kurke, Weick, and Ravlin (1989) in-vestigated organizational communication using the SRP.Bartlett s (1932)folk story The War of the Ghosts was used as the stimulus and the resultswere similar to Bartlett s (1932) showing that participants condensed, high-lighted and rationalised the story to enhance its apparent coherence andconsistency (Kurke et al., 1989, p.15).What was most intriguing in Kurke etal.(1989) was that information lost after being sent through a serial repro-duction chain could be regained when the final reproduction was fed backthrough the same chain from the last person to the first person in the origi-nal chain.In other words, when participants did not transmit what they hadreceived from their transmitters, it was not the case that they had forgottenTLFeBOOK 10.THE MICROGENESIS OF CULTURE 241the information they omitted.Rather, they remembered the information,but for some reason chose not to communicate it to their receivers.Abstraction in SRP.In some of the recent research in social psychol-ogy, research has typically identified a tendency for people to abstract in-formation in SRP.According to Fiedler et al.(1989), Grice s (1975) maxims ofcommunication encourage abstraction in person description in communica-tion.The maxim of quantity encourages speakers to be as informative asnecessary but as brief as possible.The maxim of manner also encouragesas short a communication as possible.In the first study, they had partici-pants to reproduce descriptions of four different social roles.The level ofabstraction (operationalized using Semin and Fiedler s 1988 linguistic cate-gory model) was assessed at each position in the chain.The results showedthat descriptions of social roles grew more abstract along the serial repro-duction chain.In further studies, Fiedler et al.examined how the process ofabstraction was reversed, and showed that descriptions became more con-crete following a single reproduction when the communicator expectedtheir descriptions to be challenged by their audience.Fiedler et al.pointedout that one important implication of this type of research concerns the is-sue of firsthand and secondhand information.Similar to Van Dijk (1987),they argued that knowledge about social groups is often gained from themedia or everyday communication rather than personal experience.There-fore, social stereotypes may in part be understood as a reflection of thenormal communication rules imposed on the transformations of underlyingsecond hand information (Fiedler et al., 1989, p.292; also see Maass, Salvi,Arcuri, & Semin, 1989).Gilovich s (1987) findings on the effect of second hand information maybe interpretable in line with this.Here, participants in two experimentsviewed a video depicting behaviors of a target individual and were asked todescribe on audiotape the target individual for second-generation partici-pants.Strictly speaking, because the second-generation participants did notprovide a reproduction of the stimulus, the experiment does not use themethod of serial reproduction.However, participants (both first and sec-ond generation) provided trait ratings of the target and rated whether thecauses of the behaviors were dispositional or situational.The resultsshowed that the second-generation participants made more dispositionalattributions than did the first-generation participants and that the impres-sions of the target formed by second-generation participants were morenegative than were those of the first-generation participants.In a third ex-periment, Gilovich demonstrated that the impressions of a target weremore polarized for participants who had gained the information second-hand, compared to participants who had direct experience of the target.TLFeBOOK 242 MCINTYRE ET AL.Gilovich argued that first-generation participants are exposed to more situ-ational constraints than are second-generation participants [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Allport andPostman reported that the message was changed in more highly motivatedways (highly motivated assimilation) to reflect the self-interest or specialinterests of the participants.In addition, the changes in the reproductionsreflected the prejudices of the participants.In the original stimulus of oneexperiment a White man was holding a razor; however, in the final repro-ductions in more than half of the chains, a Black man was reported to beholding the razor.Allport and Postman argued that changes such as these,which reflect the view that Black men are more likely to carry a weaponthan White men, were motivated by the prejudices held by the predomi-nantly White participants.Although Allport and Postman explained theirfindings using different terms than those of Bartlett (1932), the results arecompatible with Bartlett s findings.Reproductions grew shorter and moreconventional with peculiarities omitted.Conventionalization is evident inAllport and Postman s findings.In the decade following Allport and Post-man s (1948) rumor work, several papers reported research investigatinghow personal interest in the content influences the transmission of rumors(e.g., Higham, 1951; Zaidi, 1958).It is interesting to note that the leveling, or information loss, found byAllport and Postman may be better explained as a consequence of commu-nication rather than due to memory loss.Kurke, Weick, and Ravlin (1989) in-vestigated organizational communication using the SRP.Bartlett s (1932)folk story The War of the Ghosts was used as the stimulus and the resultswere similar to Bartlett s (1932) showing that participants condensed, high-lighted and rationalised the story to enhance its apparent coherence andconsistency (Kurke et al., 1989, p.15).What was most intriguing in Kurke etal.(1989) was that information lost after being sent through a serial repro-duction chain could be regained when the final reproduction was fed backthrough the same chain from the last person to the first person in the origi-nal chain.In other words, when participants did not transmit what they hadreceived from their transmitters, it was not the case that they had forgottenTLFeBOOK 10.THE MICROGENESIS OF CULTURE 241the information they omitted.Rather, they remembered the information,but for some reason chose not to communicate it to their receivers.Abstraction in SRP.In some of the recent research in social psychol-ogy, research has typically identified a tendency for people to abstract in-formation in SRP.According to Fiedler et al.(1989), Grice s (1975) maxims ofcommunication encourage abstraction in person description in communica-tion.The maxim of quantity encourages speakers to be as informative asnecessary but as brief as possible.The maxim of manner also encouragesas short a communication as possible.In the first study, they had partici-pants to reproduce descriptions of four different social roles.The level ofabstraction (operationalized using Semin and Fiedler s 1988 linguistic cate-gory model) was assessed at each position in the chain.The results showedthat descriptions of social roles grew more abstract along the serial repro-duction chain.In further studies, Fiedler et al.examined how the process ofabstraction was reversed, and showed that descriptions became more con-crete following a single reproduction when the communicator expectedtheir descriptions to be challenged by their audience.Fiedler et al.pointedout that one important implication of this type of research concerns the is-sue of firsthand and secondhand information.Similar to Van Dijk (1987),they argued that knowledge about social groups is often gained from themedia or everyday communication rather than personal experience.There-fore, social stereotypes may in part be understood as a reflection of thenormal communication rules imposed on the transformations of underlyingsecond hand information (Fiedler et al., 1989, p.292; also see Maass, Salvi,Arcuri, & Semin, 1989).Gilovich s (1987) findings on the effect of second hand information maybe interpretable in line with this.Here, participants in two experimentsviewed a video depicting behaviors of a target individual and were asked todescribe on audiotape the target individual for second-generation partici-pants.Strictly speaking, because the second-generation participants did notprovide a reproduction of the stimulus, the experiment does not use themethod of serial reproduction.However, participants (both first and sec-ond generation) provided trait ratings of the target and rated whether thecauses of the behaviors were dispositional or situational.The resultsshowed that the second-generation participants made more dispositionalattributions than did the first-generation participants and that the impres-sions of the target formed by second-generation participants were morenegative than were those of the first-generation participants.In a third ex-periment, Gilovich demonstrated that the impressions of a target weremore polarized for participants who had gained the information second-hand, compared to participants who had direct experience of the target.TLFeBOOK 242 MCINTYRE ET AL.Gilovich argued that first-generation participants are exposed to more situ-ational constraints than are second-generation participants [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]