Powerful Effects of Diagnostic Information on Automatic and Self-Reported Evaluation: The Moderating Role of Memory Recall

Abstract

We sometimes learn about certain behaviors of others that we consider diagnostic of their character (e.g., that they did immoral things). Recent research has shown that such information trumps the impact of other (less diagnostic) information both on self-reported evaluations and on more automatic evaluations as probed with indirect measures such as the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP). We examined whether facilitating memory recall of alternative information moderates the impact of diagnostic information on evaluation. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants learned one diagnostic positive and one diagnostic negative behavior of two unfamiliar people. Presenting a cue semantically related to this information during evaluation influenced AMP scores but not self-reported liking scores. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that elaborative rehearsal of low diagnostic information eliminated diagnosticity effects on AMP scores and reduced them on self-reported liking scores. These findings help elucidate the role of memory recall and diagnosticity in evaluation.