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. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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惊讶的阐述：当白人获得更长的句子时。

我们提出了刻板印象的一个新结果：它们会影响沟通的长度。人们更多地谈论违反常见刻板印象的事件，而不是那些证实它们的事件，我们称这种现象令人惊讶地阐述。在两个公共数据集中，当负面事件发生在白人身上（刻板印象不一致）时，政府官员写的报告比黑人或西班牙裔（刻板印象一致）发生相同事件时写的报告要长。官员撰写了更长的白人（与黑人或西班牙裔）儿童失踪儿童报告（研究 1a），法医撰写了更长的关于身份不明的白人（与黑人或西班牙裔）尸体的报告（研究 1b）。在后续实验中，传播者发现刻板印象不一致的事件更令人惊讶，这促使他们进行详细说明（研究 2）。对负面事件（即犯罪、轻罪）和积极的（即婚礼；研究 3）。我们发现，出人意料的阐述具有政策含义。观察者更愿意将政府和媒体资源集中到白人受害者身上，因为他们的案例报告更长，即使更长的报告没有更多的信息（研究 4-6）。这些研究共同引入了令人惊讶的阐述，这是一种对公共政策具有影响的新理论现象。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。这些研究引入了令人惊讶的阐述，这是一种对公共政策有影响的新理论现象。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。这些研究引入了令人惊讶的阐述，这是一种对公共政策有影响的新理论现象。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。