LAUSR

Significance How did societies of the past represent the various social groups of their world? Here, we address this question using word embeddings from 850 billion words of English-language books (from 1800 to 1999) to uncover principles of change and stability in stereotype content and valence (positivity/negativity) toward 14 social groups. Results revealed nuanced patterns of both change and stability in group representations across 200 y. Change emerged in top stereotype content (which words were most uniquely associated with a group over time), especially for racial/ethnic/nationality groups; yet the valence of group representations generally remained stable. This work highlights empirical and theoretical discoveries that ensue from applying word embeddings to long-standing questions of social change over centuries.