Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Existing theories of stereotype change have often made use ofcategorisation principles in order to provide qualitative expla-nations for both the revision and maintenance of stereotypicalbeliefs. The present paper examines the quantitative methodsunderlying these explanations, contrasting both rational andheuristic models of stereotype change using participant dataand model fits. In a comparison of three models each simulat-ing existing descriptions of stereotype change, both empiricaldata and model fits suggest that stereotypes are updated usingrational categorisation processes. This presents stereotype useas a more rational behaviour than may commonly be assumed,and provides new avenues of encouraging stereotype changeaccording to rational principles.