Stereotype Content Across Ethnicity and Socio-economic Status: a Case of Ethnic Groups in Russia

As the structure of society increases in complexity more intricate social categories emerge. People employ stereotyping to make judgements faster and these stereotypes can impair communication in some cases leading to negative consequences for society. This study investigates the interaction between target’s ethnicity and their SES in forming stereotypes and aims to clarify which is more significant. 722 Russian participants took part in a 2×4 vignette analysis of four ethnic groups and two statuses and filled out a questionnaire intended to assess stereotype content. We formed 6 hypotheses: H1: Competence of targets should be affected by the status of targets; H2: Warmth of targets should be affected by the ethnicity of targets; H3: High-status targets should be evaluated as more competent than warm; H4: Low-status targets should be evaluated as more warm than competent; H5: The consistent information about stereotype content from the status and ethnicity should lead to no changes in the evaluation of targets; H6: The inconsistent information about stereotype content from the status and ethnicity should lead to the additive pattern with changes in the evaluation of targets toward neutral. The results mostly supported the hypotheses. Competence of targets is affected both by the status and ethnicity of targets and warmth dimension affected by ethnicity. High-status targets are evaluated as more competent than warm and low-status targets – as more warm than competent. The additive model fits the data explaining cross-categorization results.