Selective use of information due to blood-typical stereotypes

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that, when subjects judge whether a stimulus presun who is described with some traits and behaviors true of a blood-typical stereotype, they will selectively use the traits and behaviors consistent wiht the stereotype. In Experiment 1, 86 female undergraduate subjects were randomly divided into two groups (Type-A- and Type-B- blood groups). The subjects of Type-A- and Type-B- blood groups first judged whether a stimulus person was true of the stereotype for people who have Type A and Type B bloods respectively. Then, the subjects of both groups were asked to point out the traits and behaviors of the person they paid attention to in the judgment, and to rate the impression they formed of the person on the bipolar adjective scales. Although the results for the attention measure did not support the hypothesis, those for the impression measure supported it. In Experiment 2, 146 female undergraduate subjects were divided into four groups (Type-A-, Type-B-, Type-O-, and Type-AB- blood groups). The results for both measures supported the hypothesis.