Automatic Stereotype Activation Is Context Dependent
Abstract
Processes involving an automatic activation of stereotypes in different contexts were investigated using a priming paradigm with the lexical decision task. The names of social categories were combined with background pictures of specific situations to yield a compound prime comprising category and context information. Significant category priming effects for stereotypic attributes (e.g., Bavarians – beer) emerged for fitting contexts (e.g., in combination with a picture of a marquee) but not for nonfitting contexts (e.g., in combination with a picture of a shop). Findings indicate that social stereotypes are organized as specific mental schemas that are triggered by a combination of category and context information.
References
2004). Contextual moderation of racial bias: The impact of social roles on controlled and automatically activated attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 5–22.
(2002). The malleability of automatic stereotypes and prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6, 242–261.
(2009). Stereotype und Vorurteile als Basis von Diskriminierung: Eine sozialkognitive Sicht [
(Stereotypes and prejudices as the basis of discrimination: a social-cognitive perspective ]. In , Diskriminierung und Toleranz: Psychologische Grundlagen und Anwendungsperspektiven (pp. 75–93). Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.2007). The effect of context on the silver ceiling: A role congruity perspective on prejudiced responses. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 1353–1366.
(1998). Stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. In , The handbook of social psychology (4th ed., Vol. II, pp. 357–411). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.
(1996). Forming impressions from stereotypes, traits, and behaviors: A parallel-constraint-satisfaction theory. Psychological Review, 102, 284–308.
(1995). Stereotype accuracy. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
(1995). The dissection of selection in person perception: Inhibitory processes in social stereotyping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 397–407.
(1994). Stereotypes as energy-saving devices: A peek inside the cognitive toolbox. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 37–47.
(2003). Contextual variations in implicit evaluation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 132, 455–469.
(2005). Social cognition: Understanding self and others. New York: Guilford.
(1977). Semantic priming and retrieval from lexical memory: Roles of inhibitionless spreading activation and limited-capacity attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 106, 226–254.
(1963). Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge. London: Routledge.
(1997). Connectionism, parallel constraint satisfaction processes, and gestalt principles: (Re)introducing cognitive dynamics to social psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 26–53.
(2004). The psychology of stereotyping. New York: Guilford.
(1977). Exploratory data analysis. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
(2003). Age stereotypes in younger and older women: Analyses of accommodative shifts with a sentence-priming task. Experimental Psychology, 50, 16–26.
(1997). Alternsstereotype im frühen und höheren Erwachsenenalter: Analyse akkommodativer Veränderungen anhand einer Satzpriming-Technik [
(Age stereotypes in early and late adulthood: Analyses of accommodative shifts with a sentence-priming task ]. Zeitschrift für Sozialpsychologie, 28, 109–128.2001). Spontaneous prejudice in context: Variability in automatically activated attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 815–827.
(2006). The situated nature of concepts. American Journal of Psychology, 119, 349–384.
(