Incidentally Activated Knowledge and Stereotype Based Judgments: A Consideration of Primed Construct-Target Attribute Match

Abstract

Research on priming suggests that incidentally activated traits (e.g., dependence) only influence judgments about applicable targets (e.g., female). In previous studies that examined this issue, however, the activation of a trait was confounded with the activation of a specific gender category. It is unclear whether social applicability effects were from (a) the activation of a socially applicable trait; (b) the activation of a socially applicable gender category; or (c) the joint activation of these last two factors. We report two studies that unconfound these prime types. In Experiment 1, we obtained a priming effect for socially applicable traits only. This influence, however, turned out to be contrastive, which we assumed occurred because participants had corrected for mental contamination by these traits. Experiment 2 tested this idea by manipulating participants' attentional resources, in addition to the prime types. As predicted, the activation of socially applicable traits resulted in contrastive judgments only under the no load condition. These findings are discussed in the wider context of assimilation and contrast models of person perception.