BlueSky Thinking Summary

In a landmark study, Tessa Charlesworth evaluates exactly this question together with her colleagues from NYU and Harvard: changes of social stereotypes over the last 115 years using computational analyses.

The approach focuses on explicit and implicit changes in language, manifest and latent content of the stereotypes about diverse social groups.

Advanced techniques, such as word embeddings, were used for an exact quantification of the shift in meaning and associations with words across time.

Its major revelation is that, against all expectations, there has been vast change at the superficial levels, but more deeply, there is a surprising similarity resting in the competence and warmth-based stereotypes.

This seeming paradox underscores how far society has come but still contains undertows of discrimination.

Charlesworth's findings question assumptions of societal evolution and underline the critical need to address, in an underlying manner, biases that perpetuate inequality.

These dynamics are important in driving authentic social change in perceptions and behaviors toward marginalized groups in the future.

It is research that begs for some reflection regarding how words shape attitudes and the complexity of combating old biases within current discourses.