Implicit Familiarity Regulates Person Perception

This paper reports research showing the impact of implicit familiarity on information processing. We predicted that implicit familiarity would reduce analytic processing. As our studies involved person perception, we predicted that familiarity would reduce attention to individuated information and increase the impact of category labels on judgments about a target person. In two studies participants read either incriminating or exculpatory information about a defendant in a criminal case and made judgments of guilt. In Experiment 1, participants were subliminally exposed to the defendant’s photo, to another matched photo, or saw no photo before reading the evidence. Those familiar with the defendant’s photo used the individuated (evidentiary) information less. In Experiment 2, participants were subtly made familiar or not with the incriminating and exculpatory information itself, and the defendant was described either as a priest or as a skinhead. Familiarity with the information reduced attention to its content, increasing reliance on category information.