The Self-Validating Role of Stereotypes

Stereotypes can influence social perceptions in many ways. The current research examined a previously unexplored possibility—that activation of a stereotype can validate thoughts about other people when the thoughts are stereotype consistent (i.e., that stereotype activation can increase people’s confidence in their previous stereotype-consistent thoughts). Given previous results for other forms of metacognition, this thought validation from stereotype activation should be most likely when people have the cognitive capacity to carefully process individuating information. In two experiments, participants were given information about a target person and then a description designed to activate a stereotype. When processing capacity was high, confidence in thoughts was greater when the initial information produced thoughts consistent, rather than inconsistent, with the stereotype that was later activated, and higher confidence in thoughts was associated with stronger perception-consistent recommendations related to the target. When processing capacity was low, an activated stereotype served its familiar heuristic role in judgment, and thought confidence played no role in judgment-related recommendations. Imagine having a conversation with someone new. As you interact with this person, you begin thinking that he or she is unintelligent or uneducated. Finally, just before parting ways, you learn one last thing—this person comes from an economically disadvantaged background (i.e., low socioeconomic status, or SES). How would this affect your judgment of this person? Past research suggests that stereotypes about low SES (e.g., low intelligence) could influence perceptions in many ways, for example, by serving as a judgmental heuristic (for a review, see Bodenhausen, Macrae, & Sherman, 1999) or by coloring one’s thoughts about a person (Wegener, Clark, & Petty, 2006). However, most support for the influence of stereotypes has come from studies in which participants learned about group membership before, rather than after, they acquired individuating information. Recent advances in the study of metacognition (see Petty, Briñol, Tormala, & Wegener, 2007) suggest that learning of someone’s group membership ‘‘after the fact’’ might allow stereotypes to influence perceptions in a way that has not been demonstrated. In these situations, we argue, stereotypes can create the metacognition of confidence in one’s stereotypeconsistent thoughts. In the research reported here, we examined this ‘‘shoe fits’’ source of confidence and how it can be responsible for effects of stereotypes on related judgments. SELF-VALIDATION AND STEREOTYPES Metacognition refers to people’s thoughts about their own thoughts or thought processes (Petty et al., 2007). Onemetacognition that has garnered much recent attention is the degree of confidence in the thoughts one produces. According to the self-validation hypothesis (Petty, Briñol, & Tormala, 2002), in addition to traditionally emphasized factors such as the number and valence of thoughts, the amount of confidence in one’s own thoughts should have a substantial impact on relevant evaluations. Twoperceivers canproduce the same positive thought about a target individual, but have differing levels of confidence in that thought. The self-validation hypothesis predicts that the perceiver who has more confidence in the thought will use it more when evaluating the target. The self-validation hypothesis has received support in several studies in which a persuasion factor (e.g., expertise of the source, positive mood) increased thought confidence when ability to think was high and the persuasion factor appeared after, rather than before, the persuasive message (for a review, see Briñol & Petty, 2009). For example, in one series of studies (Tormala, Briñol, & Petty, 2007), participants were induced to generate positive thoughts (because strong arguments were presented) or negative thoughts (because weak arguments were presented) about some proposal and then learned that the source of the message either was or was not an expert. Participants had more confidence in both their positive and their negative thoughts when the source was said to be an expert than when the Address correspondence to Jason K. Clark, Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, e-mail: jason-k-clark@ uiowa.edu. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 846 Volume 20—Number 7 Copyright r 2009 Association for Psychological Science source was not an expert. Because of greater reliance on their thoughts, individuals in the expert-source condition showed more polarized evaluations of the proposal than did individuals in the nonexpert-source condition. We believe that stereotypes can validate certain thoughts in impression-formation settings, but the effects should differ from those of previously studied variables. For example, when expertise of a message source validates thoughts about the message, it does so because people believe that the message is trustworthy, and thus that their thoughts in response to the message can be relied upon. We argue that in the case of stereotypes, because the stereotype information is directly relevant to the target of judgment, it will not globally validate all thoughts about that target. The stereotype of a group supports certain views of the group and opposes others, so stereotype information will have more selective effects on thought confidence than factors that globally validate thoughts. This perspective follows directly from the long tradition of viewing social perceivers as naive or intuitive scientists (e.g., Heider, 1958; Nisbett & Ross, 1980). Although social perceivers surely do not follow all the criteria put forth by formal science, they attempt to test and seek support for their hypotheses about their social world (see also Fiedler & Walther, 2003). In this context, we consider validation by stereotypes as similar to convergent validity in the realm of science. Convergent validity is obtained when evidence from separate sources (e.g., measures, procedures) comes together (converges) to increase one’s confidence in an assessment or scientific belief (e.g., see Campbell & Fiske, 1959). For example, if a scientist conceptually replicates an initial study using an alternative method, the replication provides validation of the initial result. The new study does not change what the scientist believes; it just increases the scientist’s confidence in the belief. Similarly, receiving new information consistent with an already-held belief does not necessarily change what a social perceiver believes, but it can increase confidence in the belief. Stereotypes have the potential to be used in this way. Social stereotypes are mental representations of many aspects of group membership, including (but not limited to) physical features, traits, and behaviors. These representations can guide perceptions relatively independently of individuating information that may be present in the environment (see Bodenhausen et al., 1999). It stands to reason, however, that stereotypes could serve not only as the primary source from which an evaluation is based, but also as confirmation of an existing belief—and thus increase confidence in that belief. We propose that perceivers will be more confident in their thoughts about a target when they later receive information about the target’s group membership that stereotypically matches, rather than mismatches, the content of those thoughts (Hypothesis 1). For example, after thinking that a person seems unintelligent, one’s confidence in those initial thoughts (which were based on available individuating information) will increase if one then learns that he or she comes from a stereotypically matching (rather thanmismatching) SES background.Moreover, these high-confidence thoughts should play a stronger role in guiding judgments about the target than thoughts that conflict with the group-membership information (Hypothesis 2).