Stereotype Activation by Stereotypic Movements

Three studies demonstrate that stereotypic movements activate the corresponding stereotype. In Study 1, participants who were unobtrusively induced to move in the portly manner that is stereotypic of overweight people subsequently ascribed more overweight-stereotypic characteristics to an ambiguous target person than did control participants. In Study 2, participants who were unobtrusively induced to move in the slow manner that is stereotypic of elderly people subsequently ascribed more elderly-stereotypic characteristics to a target than did control participants. In Study 3, participants who were induced to move slowly were faster than control participants to respond to elderly-stereotypic words in a lexical decision task. Using three different movement inductions, two different stereotypes, and two classic measures of stereotype activation, these studies converge in demonstrating that stereotypes may be activated by stereotypic movements. Stereotype activation and stereotypic behavior are intimately intertwined. A surge of research has demonstrated that activating a certain stereotype induces people to behave in ways that are consistent with that stereotype (for reviews, see Bargh, 1997; Dijksterhuis & Bargh, 2001; Wheeler & Petty, 2001). Activating the elderly stereotype, for example, induces people to move more slowly (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996). Such direct effects of stereotype activation on behavior are often explained by shared representational systems for perception and action (Dijksterhuis & Bargh, 2001; Prinz, 1990). Because the representation of a stereotype involves stereotypic attributes that are closely associated with specific behaviors, activating a stereotype also activates these associated behavioral representations. In line with the principle of ideomotor action (James, 1890), activating stereotypic behavioral representations induces people not only to perceive the behaviors of others as more stereotypic (Devine, 1989), but also to act more stereotypic themselves (Bargh et al., 1996). ‘‘Thinking is for doing’’ (Fiske, 1992, p. 877), as James explained, so that ‘‘every representation of a movement awakens in some degree the actual movement’’ (James, 1890, p. 526). If stereotype activation and stereotypic behaviors are indeed so intimately linked, then not only may activating a stereotype induce people to behave in a stereotypic manner, but, vice versa, behaving in a stereotypic manner may activate the corresponding stereotype. To the extent that the mere enactment of a stereotypic behavior activates its underlying behavioral representation, this activation may spread to associated attributes and stereotypes. Just as activating the elderly stereotype activates the associated behavioral representation of slow movements and induces people to move more slowly (Bargh et al., 1996), inducing people to move more slowly may activate a behavioral representation of slow movements, which in turn may activate the associated elderly stereotype. In the present research, I set out to examine this possibility. To do so, I unobtrusively induced participants to engage in stereotypic movements and then used two classic measures of stereotype activation (Devine, 1989; Macrae, Bodenhausen, & Milne, 1995) to examine whether the respective stereotypes had been activated. Specifically, participants engaged in movements that are stereotypic of overweight (Study 1) or elderly (Studies 2 and 3) people. They subsequently either judged an ambiguous target person along stereotypic dimensions that were not directly related to the critical behavior (Studies 1 and 2) or worked on a lexical decision task that directly assessed the accessibility of stereotypic words (Study 3). If stereotypic movements activate the associated stereotype, then participants who engage in stereotypic movements should use the activated stereotype as a basis for subsequent judgments about a target person, and compared with participants who do not engage in these movements, they should ascribe more stereotypic attributes to her. Furthermore, lexical decisions for words that are associated with the stereotype should be facilitated among participants who engage in the stereotypic movements. Address correspondence to Thomas Mussweiler, Institut für Psychologie, Erziehungswissenschaftliche Fakultät, Universität zu Köln, Gronewaldstra e 2, 50931 Köln, Germany, e-mail: thomas.mussweiler@ uni-koeln.de. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Volume 17—Number 1 17 Copyright r 2006 Association for Psychological Science