Abstract

Public service stereotypes have been the subject of various studies in public administration research. However, the cognitive processes that form the basis of these stereotypes and the heuristics processing of stereotypical information, remain empirically vague. Starting from insights on the anti-public sector bias and representativeness heuristic, we apply an experimental vignette study (n = 1,412) in which we analyze how citizens process information on employees' sector affiliation. Furthermore, we integrate non-work role-referencing to test the stereotype confirmation assumption underlying the representativeness heuristic. Our results show that sector as well as non-work role-referencing influences perceived employee professionalism but has little effect on positive stereotype confirmation. However, our results do not confirm a congruity effect of consistent stereotypical information.

摘要

公共服务刻板印象一直是公共行政研究中各种研究的主题。然而，构成这些刻板印象基础的认知过程和刻板印象信息的启发式处理在经验上仍然是模糊的。从对反公共部门偏见和代表性启发式的见解出发，我们应用了一个实验性的小插图研究（n = 1,412），其中我们分析了公民如何处理有关员工部门隶属关系的信息。此外，我们整合了非工作角色参照来测试代表性启发式背后的刻板印象确认假设。我们的结果表明，行业和非工作角色参照会影响感知的员工专业水平，但对积极的刻板印象确认影响不大。然而，我们的结果并未证实一致刻板印象信息的一致性效应。