Stereotyping the Stereotypic: When Individuals Match Social Stereotypes

This research examines how attention and accuracy motivation moderate stereo-typing in person perception. Hypotheses were derived from the stereotype validity model, which proposes that perceivers are more likely to use a stereotype as the basis of their impressions when they believe that the generalized beliefs contained within it are valid for the particular target whom they are judging. Consistent with the model’s predictions, high attention and high accuracy motivation produced stronger label effects when a target’s individuating information matched a stereo-type’s content. Also consistent with the model’s predictions, the opposite pattern was found when a target’s individuating information did not match a stereotype’s content. Under conditions of a poor match, high accuracy motivation produced weaker label effects. The authors discuss these findings with respect to accuracy and bias in the impression-formation process. Stereotypes are generalized beliefs about social groups. Stereotypes can bias impressions of target individuals, a process referred to as stereotyping. Stereotyping often occurs because of cognitive capacity limitations. When forming impressions of others, perceivers frequently are exposed to a com-plex array of social information, but have only limited cognitive resources with which to process this information. One way that perceivers reduce the complexity of incoming social information is by using stereotypes to judge targets (Fiske & Neuberg, 1991). Stereotypes can provide ready-made im-pressions that can free perceivers from having to carefully process a target’s personal or individuating information. Thus, stereotyping can help per-ceivers to form impressions with ease and efficiency. 1Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Stephanie Madon, W11