It is now well-established that stereotypes can become activated unintentionally and outside of awareness by the presence of the relevant group features. There is also a long tradition of theory and evidence that perceptual and behavioral processes are intimately related (e.g., Berkowitz, 1984; James, 1890; Piaget, 1948). Considering these two phenomena together suggests that stereotype activat...

Previous research has shown that trait concepts and stereotype become active automatically in the presence of relevant behavior or stereotyped-group features. Through the use of the same priming procedures as in previous impression formation research, Experiment 1 showed that participants whose concept of rudeness was printed interrupted the experimenter more quickly and frequently than did par...

How do consumers react when they believe that a transaction partner will view them through the lens of a stereotype? We predicted and found that being aware of a negative stereotype about a group to which one belongs (e.g., gender) made consumers sensitive to whether service providers were ingroup versus outgroup members, and lowered purchase intentions when the provider was an outgroup member....

Research has connected stereotype threat and regulatory fit by showing improved performance for individuals with negative stereotypes when they focused on minimizing potential losses. In the current study, non-Black participants, who were non-experts at golf putting, were told that a golf-putting task was diagnostic of natural athletic ability (i.e., negative stereotype) or sports intelligence ...

This work examined if stigmatized targets will embrace negative in-group stereotypes in order to protect their self-esteem from the threat of stereotypic failures. All studies focused on the stereotype that women have lower math ability than men. In Study 1, women who failed a math test showed buffered self-esteem if they were first given the opportunity to endorse this stereotype. Study 2 repl...

Although the effects of negative stereotypes and observer pressure on athletic performance have been well researched, the effects of positive stereotypes on performance, particularly in the presence of observers, is not known. In the current study, White males watched a video either depicting Whites basketball players as the best free throwers in the NBA (positive stereotype), Black basketball ...

Americans stereotype elderly people as warm and incompetent, following from perceptions of them as noncompetitive and low status, respectively. This article extends existing research regarding stereotyping of older people in two ways. First, we discuss whether the mixed elderly stereotype is unique to American culture. Data from six non-U.S. countries, including three collectivist cultures, dem...

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the role of interactivity (the use of pen and paper) in defusing the impact of stereotype threat on difficult mental arithmetic tasks, covering all four operations of mathematics. Eighty-four 16-year-old girls from secondary schools in South East England (UK) participated in this study. Participants carried out (in an educational setting) diff...

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 auth...

The authors tested and confirmed the hypothesis that priming a stereotype or trait leads to complex overt behavior in line with this activated stereotype or trait. Specifically, 4 experiments established that priming the stereotype of professors or the trait intelligent enhanced participants' performance on a scale measuring general knowledge. Also, priming the stereotype of soccer hooligans or...