Stereotype Bias Research Articles

Contingency learning and stereotype formation: Illusory and spurious correlations revisited

This chapter provides a review of recent research on distinctiveness-based illusory correlations and spurious correlations in biased stereotype formation, with a particular focus on the commonalities of the two phenomena. In particular, we critically analyse the impact of episodic memory for specific events on biased stereotype formation, and we investigate the role of salient context factors for contingency learning and stereotypic inference. The reviewed findings question some traditional assumptions concerning the origins of illusory and spurious correlations, which largely relied on the very specifics of the experimental paradigms that produced the effects. The findings are, however, compatible with more integrative theoretical frameworks that allow one to subsume biased stereotypes on the basis of illusory and spurious correlations together with several other judgement biases. Associationistic learning models and pseudo-contingencies are proposed as promising conceptual frameworks.

Choosing the best (wo)man for the job: The effects of mortality salience, sex, and gender stereotypes on leader evaluations

The present research investigated the impact of death-related thoughts on preferences for male and female leaders and tested alternative predictions derived from terror management theory: the stereotype bias effect was predicted to result in a global preference for male leaders (Study1) and a preference for agentic leaders (Study 2), whereas the ingroup bias effect was predicted to result in women favoring female leaders and men preferring male leaders. These hypotheses were examined in two experimental studies wherein participants were presented with a mortality salience or control manipulation and subsequently presented with campaign statements from male and female gubernatorial candidates. Results from Study 1 were in accord with the enhanced ingroup bias predictions: under mortality salience women preferred and voted for the female candidate more so than the male candidate, while men showed the reverse preference. Results from Study 2, which also manipulated gender stereotypic traits of the candidates, support the enhanced stereotype bias effect: under mortality salience female participants preferred and voted for the agentic candidate regardless of sex, and males preferred the agentic male candidate. Results support previous TMT research demonstrating both ingroup bias and stereotype bias processes.

Affective regulation of implicitly measured stereotypes and attitudes: Automatic and controlled processes

Three experiments indicate that affective cues regulate expression of implicitly measured stereotypes and attitudes. In Experiment 1, negative mood led to less stereotypic bias on the weapon-identification task [Payne, B. K. (2001). Prejudice and perception: The role of automatic and controlled processes in misperceiving a weapon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 181–192] than positive mood. In Experiment 2, negative mood led to less implicitly measured racial prejudice than positive mood. In Experiment 3, negative, relative to positive, mood decreased women’s implicitly measured preference for the arts over math. Process–dissociation analyses suggested that affect regulated automatic attitude and stereotype activation rather than controlled influences on attitude expression. The results show that mood can shape even rudimentary forms of cognition.

Manufacturing racial humor

The study of the scathing content of “¿Cómo se dice X en (language) Y?” jokes is compared to the cultural use of American Mock Spanish: i.e: “no problemo” expressions. Our study analyzes the collected corpora of Cómo se dice... jokes and organizes them by regional areas and content variation. If Mock Spanish relies on the apparent social weakness of Latinos in the US, Cómo se dice... jokes revile stereotypical characters and cultures recognized as inferior by Spanish-speaking joketellers. Our surprising conclusion is not that the telling of these jokes is bluntly reprehensible but that, with cruel accuracy, the laugh they produce helps us humans know the place we occupy in a predefined scale of stereotypical cultural bias.

The impact of gender stereotypes on the evaluation of general practitioners’ communication skills: An experimental study using transcripts of physician–patient encounters

Objective The present study has been designed to test for the effect of physicians’ gender on the perception and assessment of empathic communication in medical encounters. Methods Eighty-eight volunteers were asked to assess six transcribed interactions between physicians and a standardized patient. The effects of physicians’ gender were tested by the experimental manipulation of physicians’ gender labels in transcripts. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two testing conditions: (1) perceived gender corresponds to the physician's true gender; (2) perceived gender differs from the physician's true gender. Empathic communication was assessed using the Rating Scales for the Assessment of Empathic Communication in Medical Interviews. Results A 2 (physician's true gender: female vs. male) × 2 (physician's perceived gender: female vs. male) × 2 (rater's gender: female vs. male) mixed multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) yielded a main effect for physician's true gender. Female physicians were rated higher on empathic communication than male physicians irrespective of any gender labels. Conclusion The present findings suggest that gender differences in the perception of physician's empathy are not merely a function of the gender label. These findings provide evidence for differences in male and female physicians’ empathic communication that cannot be attributed to stereotype bias. Practice implications Future efforts to evaluate communication skills training for general practitioners may consider gender differences.

Sneaking in through the back door: How category-based stereotype suppression leads to rebound in feature-based effects

Given the dramatic shifts in societal norms to curb overt stereotyping and prejudice, these biases may leak out in more subtle ways than were apparent in the past. Accordingly, we examined how the suppression of stereotypes might affect post-suppression category-based stereotyping and the more subtle feature-based stereotyping. In support of our proposition, participants in the suppression condition used more feature-based, but less category-based stereotypes in their post-suppression task than participants in the control condition. Furthermore, a relation between post-suppression category-based and feature-based stereotyping existed in the suppression condition such that decreases in category-based stereotyping were associated with increases in feature-based stereotyping. Findings as a whole suggest that norms against the expression of stereotypic biases may ironically lead people to be more vulnerable to biases as a function of within-category features.

Stereotype endorsements, gender and some home economics-related behaviour among secondary school students in Gaberone, Botswana

The most lucrative resources for sustainable technological, economic, social and personal development are human resources. Nations are advanced to the extent that they have been able to develop in every area of human potential the resources of every citizen. But in some societies such development is limited by stereotypic biases against certain groups in the society and against some areas of human potential. For example, by stereotyping home economics as female-only subject, males accept the limitations placed on them by the gendering process which inhibits the identification, development and utilization of home economics skills necessary for their personal, social, economic and technological development. To determine the extent and consequences of such endorsement on willingness to study and attitude towards home economics among secondary school students in Gaborone, a survey analytical study involving 402 randomly selected subjects was carried out. The results of appropriate data analyses to test relevant research hypotheses showed a high level endorsement of home economics as a female-only subject among the students and confirmed the speculation that the level of such endorsement has significance influence on students' willingness to study and attitude towards the subject irrespective of gender. These results were discussed and some recommendations made. Gender and Behaviour. Vol. 4 (2) 2006: pp. 927-952

Gender‐based stereotypes in the workplace: the case of Greece

PurposeOrganizations need to address stereotypical bias in order to ensure that they do not underutilize any segment of the talent pool, and scarce managerial skills are effectively deployed. To this aim, research on gender stereotypes would provide valuable information to corporate leaders. Given the dearth of empirical research on this issue for the case of Greece, the current study was designed to explore the relationship between attitudes toward women as managers and gender‐based stereotypes.Design/methodology/approachA survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire. Participants in the survey were 173 full‐time employees working for firms across all the sectors of the economy.FindingsThe main findings indicate that the primary source of shaping respondents’ attitudes is their own gender. Other personal characteristics such as age, education, managerial experience, and working under a female supervisor seem not to have a measurable effect on employees’ stereotypic attitudes toward women in management. Furthermore, organizational characteristics such as the firm's nationality, ownership, sector, or department do not seem to provide any source of variance in employees’ attitudes.Research limitations/implicationsFurther research to extend the current investigation to employers and managers would allow for a more articulated discussion of the main sources of influence on stereotypical attitudes toward women in management.Originality/valueGiven the scarcity of empirical research on stereotyping and women's career prospects in Greece, this study contributes to debates in the wider academic community on the issue of analysing empirically stereotypic attitudes toward women as managers.

The effect of anxiety on impression formation: affect-congruent or stereotypic biases?

Two classes of theories propose that anxious individuals will form either more affect-congruent or more stereotypic impressions of others. These theories' predictions are not mutually exclusive. Eighty-one participants were examined to determine if either class of theories was more descriptive of the effect of anxiety on impression formation or whether a theory combining elements of both was more appropriate. Anxious participants read behavioural descriptions about an Australian Aboriginal target that were stereotypic, non-stereotypic, threatening, and non-threatening, and rated the target on traits that corresponded to the behavioural descriptions. Anxious participants formed impressions that were more affect-congruent, but not more stereotypic, than those formed by control participants. This result was replicated in a field study with 61 participants who were waiting to see a dentist. Future studies should examine the cognitive mechanisms that influence and underlie anxious affect-congruent impression formation.

Not all stereotypic biases are created equal: evidence for a stereotype-disconfirming bias.

Stereotype-confirming biases are well documented in the social psychological literature. However, motivations to disconfirm social stereotypes may be more influential for unprejudiced individuals. Three experiments are presented that test the hypothesis that extremely unprejudiced people exhibit a bias toward stereotype disconfirmation. Experiment 1 investigates stereotype disconfirmation in information-seeking preferences. Experiments 2 and 3 explore attributional strategies for stereotype disconfirmation. In all experiments, unprejudiced participants respond in ways reflecting a motivation to disconfirm social stereotypes. Implications for stereotype change and stereotypic influences on judgment and behavior are discussed.

Memory monitoring and the control of stereotype distortion

We propose a framework for investigating the role of conscious experience in regulating stereotype-based memory distortions. Memory biases are mediated by multiple memory processes, including forms of discriminability and response biases. Different psychological interpretations of these processes depend on how they relate to subjective experiences (e.g., conscious recollection vs. implicit accessibility processes). The ability to control memory distortions, in turn, depends on the psychological meaning attached to these parameters. In Experiment 1 we found that confidence was positively related to discriminability but uncorrelated with stereotype-consistent bias. In Experiment 2 participants were allowed to selectively control when they responded. Because of the asymmetry in monitoring ability, participants were able to increase overall accuracy, but were not able to reduce the stereotype bias. Discussion focuses on the conditions in which subjective experience may provide a valid basis for controlling biases, and when subjective experience may prove deceptive, exacerbating biases.

From the Primary to the General Election

Prior research on the media’s portrayal of female candidates in comparison to male candidates has indicated that differences do exist, although most studies have focused on general election races of senate candidates. This study analyzed the media’s portrayal of candidates in mixed-gender gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races through a comparison of primary coverage to general election coverage in 2000. The study relied on content analyses of more than 1,200 articles from major newspapers to understand how female and male candidates might be framed differently when running for their party’s nomination as opposed to during the general election. The findings suggest that although the coverage from the primaries to the general election was relatively consistent across most categories of analysis, female candidates continue to face some stereotypical biases in the news coverage of their campaigns.

Best laid plans: Effects of goals on accessibility bias and cognitive control in race-based misperceptions of weapons

This study applied process dissociation (PD) to investigate the role of conscious goals in controlling automatic influences of stereotypes. A priming procedure was used to show that the presence of Black (vs. White) faces caused stereotypical misidentifications of objects. Specifically, Black primes caused lures to be misidentified as weapons, whereas White primes caused weapons to be misidentified as non-threatening objects. By manipulating the goals with which participants completed the experiment, we demonstrated that the stereotype bias was invariant across conscious goals to avoid vs. use the influence of race. PD analysis provided three major insights. First, the impact of race was mediated solely through an unintentional accessibility bias. Second, requiring participants to respond rapidly increased the impact of stereotypes, an effect that was mediated by a reduction in controlled discrimination among stimuli. Finally, calling attention to race increased the stereotype accessibility bias, regardless of whether race was made salient with the intention to use, or the intention to avoid the influence of race.

Social categorization and stereotyping: 'You mean I'm one of "them"?'.

What happens when people discover that they are members of a group about which they have previously formed some stereotype? To address this question, procedures previously shown to induce negative stereotypes of minority groups were combined with a social categorization manipulation. Participants in a distinctiveness-based illusory correlation paradigm (Hamilton & Gifford, 1976) either knew nothing about their group membership, or learned that they were a member of the minority group or the majority group either before or after being presented the stereotype-engendering stimulus materials. Results revealed that social categorization into the minority group before stimulus presentation eliminated the perceived stereotype and reversed the evaluative bias, whereas social categorization into the minority group after stimulus presentation had no effect on the perceived stereotype and only a weak effect in reducing the evaluative bias. Social categorization into the majority group either before or after stimulus presentation had little effect on the perceived stereotype and evaluative bias. These results clarify the process underlying the influence of social categorization on stereotype formation, underscore the distinction between affective and cognitive influences on stereotype formation and stereotype change, and offer insights into 'autostereotyping' among members of minority groups.

Perspective-taking: decreasing stereotype expression, stereotype accessibility, and in-group favoritism.

Using 3 experiments, the authors explored the role of perspective-taking in debiasing social thought. In the 1st 2 experiments, perspective-taking was contrasted with stereotype suppression as a possible strategy for achieving stereotype control. In Experiment 1, perspective-taking decreased stereotypic biases on both a conscious and a nonconscious task. In Experiment 2, perspective-taking led to both decreased stereotyping and increased overlap between representations of the self and representations of the elderly, suggesting activation and application of the self-concept in judgments of the elderly. In Experiment 3, perspective-taking reduced evidence of in-group bias in the minimal group paradigm by increasing evaluations of the out-group. The role of self-other overlap in producing prosocial outcomes and the separation of the conscious, explicit effects from the nonconscious, implicit effects of perspective-taking are discussed.

On the Psychological Basis of Economics and Social Psychology

The emotive (Gossen) equation in conjunction with its expectational constraints, comprising a formulation or model of the individual's expectational plan, is applied to elementary cases in economics and social psychology thereby uniting psychology, social psychology, and economics within one methodology. This canonical formulation represents the individual's future (intertemporal) uncertainties and possible choices, and resulting experiences, accounting for emotive- and risk-discounting of expected instant utility. In an additional deepening of neoclassical economics, expected intertemporal utility is mapped onto a real-time datum as anticipatory feeling-state. Following surprise (e.g., by a creative thought, or any unexpected occurrence), of the several candidate expectational plans that the individual may consider, the plan which provides the maximum anticipatory feeling-state is chosen. This (operative) plan guides behavior until again negated by surprise. The instant utility approach is applied to an elementary example of capital function, and to two cases of economically interacting individuals, the second of which models an imposed stereotypic bias on the expected productivity of one of the agents. The effect of this bias on the welfare of the cooperating agents, and on the capital versus finished good exchange price, is addressed. Inasmuch as the Gossen equation acquires empirical substantiation from neuropsychological investigations, it may be concluded that a unifying connection between the human and natural sciences has been realized.

Preventing the Application of Stereotypic Biases in the Courtroom: The Role of Detailed Testimony1

To determine whether detailed testimony has equivalent effects on judgments of stereotyped and nonstereotyped defendants, subjects read a synopsis of a criminal court case in which the defendant either was a stereotyped offender or was not. Additionally, the degree of detail in the prosecution testimony and defense testimony was varied. Results indicated that defendant stereotypicality had a greater impact under conditions in which witnesses provided equal amounts of detail in their testimony. When witnesses differed in the degree of detail in their testimony, the stereotypicality of the defendant was disregarded and judgments favored the witness who provided greater detail. These findings suggest that stereotype application is not inevitable; rather, stereotypes may bias jurors' decision‐making processes when the quality and quantity of the evidence does not easily lead to a confident judgment.

AS A TOURIST IN TAHITI

This article evolved from a disappointing holiday I had in Tahiti. First, I present my Tahitian experience in a storied form. Then, after condemning Tahiti as an unworthy leisure resort, I examine my own expectations as a Western woman and trained ethnographer. I discuss how I longed for an exotic, unspoiled, Pacific pleasure paradise in a distant periphery and how I searched for something in Tahiti that I defined as authentic. I discuss how these expectations reflect a stereotypical Western cultural bias toward a binary, hierarchical understanding of the world—a worldview that as an ethnographer, I was consciously trying to avoid. Because I am mainly concerned with issues of self-reflexivity in ethnographic research, this article focuses on the relationship between researcher's Westernness and tourism.

Gender Stereotypes and Decision Context in the Evaluation of Political Candidates

Abstract Past studies investigating the effects of negative gender stereotypes on information processing about women political candidates have produced mixed results. Some studies find evidence of strong stereotypic biases against women candidates while other work fails to uncover such biases. One possible solution to these discrepant findings is the cognitive complexity of the decision task. Research from social psychology suggests that people may rely on stereotypic processing strategies only when cognitive demand is low. We conduct two experiments investigating the effects of gender stereotypes in low and high complexity decision tasks. We find evidence of stereotype bias only in the low complexity task. Implications of these findings for women in electoral politics, as well as future research investigating the effects of gender stereotypes, are examined.

Effect of positive reframing and social support on perception of perimenstrual changes among women with premenstrual syndrome

Traditional menstrual cycle research reflects a stereotypical negative bias that does not encompass the complexity of the phenomena. For example, even though the majority of menstrual cycle literature has focused on negative changes during the perimenstruum, some women report positive changes. This article describes a unique intervention aimed at refraining perceptions of menstrual cycle experiences for the purpose of diminishing perimenstrual impairment. The intervention was a health promotion program that provided social support and a positive reframing component for women with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) across four menstrual cycles. Through use of a preexperimental design, data were collected on 18 women. Daily measures included prospective assessment of perceptions of perimenstrual changes (impairment and activation). Retrospective assessments of moods (anxiety and depression), social resources (personal resources and marital satisfaction), and perimenstrual change perceptions were gathered at three time periods—before, during, and after the experimental condition. Data analyses included descriptive and multivariate strategies. Results indicated that, although perimenstrual activation did not increase significantly, impairment did decrease. In addition, there were significant changes from baseline to follow‐up on state depression and personal resource variables. Findings from this study underscore the need for further investigation of the wide continuum of women's diverse menstrual cycle experiences.