Professional discrepancies of doctors and lawyers in episodic memory: Modulations of professional morality and warning.

Abstract

Past investigations have consistently demonstrated the robust stereotype-consistent effect in the circumstance of source memory but not always in item memory, including the case of professional stereotype. However, it remains unclear whether the effect still occurs in professional stereotype when considering the attributes of negative (or bad) or positive (or good); besides, it has not been concerned about how does warning work in remembering the professional stereotypical stimuli. The current experiments aimed to address these issues by adopting descriptive sentences as stimuli, which were related or unrelated to doctors and lawyers, and with different professional moral valences (negative, neutral, or positive). Item memory and source memory were tested successively. Experiment 1 without the explicit warning confirmed the reliable stereotype-consistent effect solely in source memory; the modulation of professional morality on memory behaved differently between doctor and lawyer, that is, negativity bias versus positivity bias. When giving an explicit warning (Experiment 2), the stereotype-consistent effect attenuated in the lawyer case, and the occurrence of negativity bias was sensitive to the memory task. Thus, our findings further reinforce the dual-process model; both professional morality and warning work in memory of professional stereotype, depending upon the nature of the profession, the concerned memory task, and also the presence of warning. Implications are made for future research to consider more perspectives.