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How do societal stereotypes about social groups become internalized as an individual’s own group-based preferences? Although stereotypes are known to create social expectancies, we propose that stereotypes also shape how one experiences and learns from interactions with group members—a process that may induce internalized group-based preferences. In a series of experiments, participants interacted with players from two groups, described with either positive or negative stereotypes, in a reinforcement learning task presented as a money sharing game. Although players’ sharing behaviors were equated between groups, participants formed more positive reward associations with players from positively-stereotyped groups. Computational modeling revealed that stereotypes set participants’ expectancies about group members’ behavior and biased how they learned from player feedback. We then show that these preferences, once formed, spread unwittingly to others who observe these interactions. Finally, we show that this pattern of biased learning and propagation occurs even when the stereotypic message comes from an opposed politician, suggesting that this transmission—from societal stereotypes to personal preferences—may occur despite one’s explicit goals. These findings provide a mechanistic account of how exposure to social stereotypes can transform into personal group-based preferences and spread to others.