And yet they move: the impact of direction of deviance on stereotype change.

In 4 studies the authors compared the effect of exemplars that deviate from the prototype in one or the other direction while controlling for the absolute amount of deviance. Incongruent exemplars typically do not change a stereotype. Yet, it is unclear whether this is also the case with exemplars that are more extreme than the stereotype, named supercongruent hereafter. Within Study 1 the authors showed that supercongruent exemplars can be differentiated from congruent exemplars and that they are perceived as more typical than incongruent exemplars. Study 2 demonstrated that supercongruent exemplars increase the perceived differences between groups, while incongruent exemplars do not lead to a decrease. In Study 3, a supercongruent exemplar was generalized to the stereotype, while an incongruent exemplar did not affect the stereotype. Study 4 replicated this finding and excluded the alternative hypothesis that this effect is due to the greater extremity and thus diagnosticity of supercongruent information.