Surprised Elaboration: When White Men Get Longer Sentences

Lauren Eskreis-Winkler*, Ayelet Fishbach

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present a new consequence of stereotypes: they affect the length of communications. People say more about events that violate common stereotypes than those that confirm them, a phenomenon we dub surprised elaboration. Across two public data sets, government officials wrote longer reports when negative events befell White people (stereotype-inconsistent) than when the same events befell Black or Hispanic people (stereotype-consistent). Officers authored longer missing child reports of White (vs. Black or Hispanic) children (Study 1a), and medical examiners wrote longer reports of unidentified White (vs. Black or Hispanic) bodies (Study 1b). In follow-up experiments, communicators found stereotype-inconsistent events more surprising and this prompted them to elaborate (Study 2). Surprised elaboration occurred for negative events (i.e., crimes, misdemeanors) and also positive ones (i.e., weddings; Study 3). We found that surprised elaboration has policy implications. Observers preferred to funnel government and media resources toward White victims, since their case reports were longer, even when longer reports were not more informative (Studies 4–6). Together, these studies introduce surprised elaboration, a new theoretical phenomenon with implications for public policy.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)941-956
Number of pages16
JournalJournal of personality and social psychology
Volume123
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 28 2022

Funding

We are grateful to the participants who made this work possible and to Carman Fowler and Eda Erensoy for their help. This work was supported by funding from the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business. Lauren Eskreis-Winkler extends special thanks to Ari Lustig, whose wonderfulness is so exceptional as to be surprising, and merits much elaboration.

Keywords

  • Communication
  • Elaboration
  • Stereotypes
  • Surprise

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Social Psychology
  • Sociology and Political Science

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