Person memory research has investigated the effects of trait and stereotype expectancies on the organization and retrieval of expectancy-congruent and expectancy-incongruent behavioral information. We extend this work by investigating the combined effects of stereotype and trait expectancies. Participants were presented with either (a) a trait expectancy only, with no information about the target's ethnicity, or (b) an expectation that the target was African American as well as a trait expectancy. When no information was presented about the target's ethnicity, the standard advantage in recall for trait-incongruent behaviors was found. However, when information that the target was African American was added to trait information, this recall advantage for trait-incongruent behaviors was reduced for both European American and African American participants. These results are discussed in terms of the combination of trait and stereotype expectancies.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
2.
Asch, S. E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 41, 1230-1240.
3.
Ashmore, R. D. , & Del Boca, F. K. (1981). Conceptual approaches in stereotypes and stereotyping. In D. Hamilton (Ed.), Cognitive processes in stereotyping and intergroup behavior (pp. 1-35). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
4.
Bargh,J. A. , & Thein, R. D. (1985). Individual construct accessibility, person memory, and the recall-judgment link: The case of information overload. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 1129-1146.
5.
Biernat, M. (1995). The shifting standards model: Implications of stereotype accuracy for social judgment. In Y -T. Lee, L. J. Jussim, & C. R. McCauley (Eds.), Stereotype accuracy: Toward appreciating group differences (pp. 87-114). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
6.
Biernat, M. , & Manis, M. (1994). Shifting standards and stereotype-based judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 5-20.
7.
Bodenhausen, G. V. (1988). Stereotypic biases in social decision making and memory: Testing process models of stereotype use. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55, 726-737.
8.
Bogardus, E. S. (1925). Measuring social distance. Journal of Applied Sociology, 9, 299-308.
9.
Borgida, E. , & DeBono, K. G. (1989). Social hypothesis-testing and the role of expertise. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 212-221.
10.
Brigham, J. C. (1971). Ethnic stereotypes. Psychological Bulletin, 76, 15-38.
11.
Brown, R. (1965). Social psychology. New York: Free Press.
12.
Budesheim, L. , Houston, D., Gingrich, B. E., & Bonnelle, K.(1994). Towards a model of the impression formation process: The interconnection of target and source effects. Unpublished manuscript.
13.
Chaiken, S. , Liberman, A., & Eagly, A. H. (1983). Heuristic and systematic information processing within and beyond the persuasion context. In J. S. Uleman &J. A. Bargh (Eds.), Unintended thought (pp. 212-252). New York: Guilford.
14.
Cohen, C. E. (1981). Person categories and social perception: Testing some boundaries of the processing effects of prior knowledge. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40, 441-452.
15.
Devine, P. G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 5-18.
16.
Driscoll, D. M. (1992). Multi-trait person impressions. Dissertation Abstracts International 53, 05B. (University Microfilms International No. 9226562).
17.
Driscoll, D. M. , Hamilton, D. L., & Sorrentino, R. M. (1991). Uncertainty orientation and recall of person descriptive information. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17, 494-500.
18.
Esses, V. M. , Haddock, G., & Zanna, M. P. (1993). Values, stereotypes, and emotions as determinants of intergroup attitudes. In D. M. Mackie & D. L. Hamilton (Eds.), Affect, cognition, and stereotyping: Interactive processes in group perception (pp. 137-166). New York: Academic Press.
19.
Fiske, S. T. (1980). Attention and weight in person perception: The impact of negative and extreme behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 889-906.
20.
Fiske, S. T. , & Neuberg, S. L. (1990). A continuum of impression formation, from category-based to individuating processes: Influences of information and motivation on attention and interpretation. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 23, pp. 1-74). New York: Academic Press.
21.
Gingrich, B. E. (1995). The content of social stereotypes and their gender subgroups. Unpublished manuscript.
22.
Gingrich, B. E. , & Driscoll, D. M. (1993, July). The effects of single-trait, multi-trait, and social stereotypic expectancies on person impression. Paper presented at the fifth annual conference of the American Psychological Society, Chicago.
23.
Hamilton, D. L. , Driscoll, D. M., & Worth, L. T. (1989). Cognitive organization of impressions: Effects of incongruency in complex representation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 925-939.
24.
Hamilton, D. L. , & Trolier, T. K.(1986). Stereotypes and stereotyping: An overview of the cognitive approach. In J. F. Dovidio & S. L. Gaertner (Eds.), Prejudice, discrimination, and racism (pp. 127-158). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
25.
Hastie, R. (1980). Memory for behavioral information that confirms or contradicts a personality impression. In R Hastie, T. M. Ostrom, E. B. Ebbesen, R. S. Wyer, Jr., D. L. Hamilton, & D. E. Carlston, (Eds.), Person memory: The cognitive basis of social perception (pp. 155-177). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
26.
Hastie, R. (1984). Causes and effects of causal attribution. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 44-56.
27.
Hastie, R. , & Kumar, P. A. (1979). Person memory: Personality traits as organizing principles in memory for behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 25-38.
28.
Jones,J. M. (1997). Prejudice and racism. New York: McGraw-Hill.
29.
Kahneman, D. , Slovic, P., & Tversky, A. (1982). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University Press.
30.
Kruglanski, A. W. (1989). Cognitive-motivational bases of human knowledge: A theory of lay epistemics. New York: Plenum Press.
31.
Nisbett, R. E. , & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
32.
Rothbart, M. (1981). Memory processes and social beliefs. In D. Hamilton (Ed.), Cognitive processes in stereotyping and intergroup behavior (pp. 145-182). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
33.
Rothbart, M. , Evans, M., & Fulero, S. (1979). Recall for confirming events: Memory processes and the maintenance of social stereotypes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 15, 343-355.
34.
Skowronski, J. J. , & Carlston, D. E. (1989). Negativity and extremity biases in impression formation: A review of explanations. Psychological Bulletin, 105, 131-142.
35.
Srull, T. K. , Lichtenstein, M., & Rothbart, M. (1985). Associative storage and retrieval processes in person memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 11, 316-345.
36.
Srull, T. K, & Wyer, R. S., (1989). Person memory and judgment. Psychological Review, 96, 58-83.
37.
Stangor, C. , & Mc Millan, D. (1992). Memory for expectancy-congruent and expectancy-incongruent information: A review of the social and social developmental literatures. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 42-60.
38.
Stephan, W. G. (1985). Intergroup relations. In G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (3rd ed., Vol. 2, pp. 599-658). New York: Random House.
39.
Taylor, D. G. , Sheatsley, P. B., & Greeley, A. M. (1978). Attitudes toward racial integration. Scientific American, 238, 42-49.
40.
Wyer, R. S. , Bodenhausen, G. V., & Srull, T. K.(1984). The cognitive representation of persons and groups and its effect on recall and recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 20, 445-469.
41.
Wyer, R. S. , & Martin, L. L. (1986). Person memory: The role of traits, group stereotypes, and specific behaviors in the cognitive representation of persons. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 661-667.
