Reducing stereotype-based judgments: The impact of habitual stereotype use

The reported experiment investigated whether an individual's habitual use of social stereotypes influenced the impact of the presentation of stereotype-disconfirming information on stereotype-based beliefs. Participants were first categorized as either high or low users of stereotypes using a diary task. They were then presented with stereotype-disconfirming information about members of a specific target group and subsequently evaluated a member of the group about which disconfirming information had been presented and a member of each of two other stereotyped groups about which no information had been presented. Relative to control participants, low users of stereotypes made less stereotype-based judgments only for the member of the target group about which disconfirming information had been received whilst high users showed a generalized reduction in their use of stereotype-based judgments across all the targets. These differences were not due to differential processing of the presented information; neither reading time nor memory measures differentiated between high and low users. Results are discussed in terms of both the use of stereotypes and stereotype change in general.