Stereotype Accessibility and Information Processing

Abstract

The stereotyping literature heretofore has not fully addressed individual differences in the relative construct accessibility of social stereotypes. Stereotyping research has tested the influence of explicitly activated stereotype knowledge on information processing, but paid little attention to the spontaneous application of stereotypes when stimulus information is processed. Although stereotypes are known to influence both encoding and response stages of information processing, the latter effect has received little attention in comparison to the former. The present research tested the hypothesis that gender stereotypes would affect how individuals encode and respond to gender-related behaviors and that individual differences in the construct accessibility of gender-stereotypical attributes would moderate these effects. Subjects saw a series of behavioral descriptions, some of which were stereotypically masculine or feminine, performed by two men and two women, and then participated in a recognition memory test. Subjects were more likely to report stereotype-consistent (versus inconsistent or irrelevant) behaviors as having been seen and also made more within-sex than cross-sex false alarms. Supporting the hypothesis that stereotype accessibility is an important individual-difference variable, individuals who displayed high (versus low) levels of individual construct accessibility for gender showed a greater tendency to respond consistently with gender stereotypes and made more within-sex (versus cross-sex) false alarms. These results suggest that highly gender-accessible individuals were especially likely to process stimulus information in terms of gender.