Social judgeability theory holds that people rely on naive theories when forming impressions. One rule is that perceivers should not judge others on the sole basis of their stereotypes. They may, however, misattribute a category-based impression to the target information and fall prey to the illusion of being informed provided individuating evidence is present and the stereotype is not made salient. The authors suggest that such a misattribution process contributes to the dilution of stereotypes. Subjects rated a member of a stereotyped group either after or both before and after reception of target information. The authors predicted that pseudorelevant information (i.e., information nondiagnostic for the specific judgment but diagnostic for many others) but not irrelevant information would lead to a stereotypical single judgment and dilute an initial stereotyped evaluation. Results confirmed the hypotheses and stress the role of implicit rules in social inference.
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