This chapter describes an experiment designed to examine stereotype rebound effects in two dissimilar social outgroups: African poor and African wealthy target groups. Suppressors showed evidence of hyperacccesible stereotypes in the writing of their second narrative essay and seating positions chosen (an indication of stereotype rebound) were in opposite directions for poor and wealthy targets. Specifically, suppressors sat closer to poor targets and tended to choose seats farther from wealthy targets than did nonsuppressors. Results suggest that the content of perceivers’
stereotypes influences rebound effects.
Results from Experiment 2 indicate that stereotype rebound effects, evidenced in behavioural measures, may occur for individuals who suppress stereotypes of the developing-world poor. However, unlike other research, (Macrae et al., 1994; Mooney, Cohn & Swift, 1992) rebound effects in Experiment 2, measured indirectly in terms of participants’ seating choices, were approach rather than avoidance behaviour. In contrast to Macrae et al. (1994) who used a skinhead target group, stereotype suppressors
responded to a developing-world poor target group by choosing closer seating positions than participants who did not suppress their stereotypes. In addition, whereas
suppressors’ second essays about skinheads demonstrated rebound effects in Macrae et al.’s experiments, suppressors second essays about the African poor in Experiment 1, did not. These findings, no apparent rebound effects in suppressors’ essays and closer seating choices for suppressors, suggest that underlying differences in stereotype content
for the two different target groups may determine not only whether rebound follows stereotype suppression but also how rebound effects are expressed.
A review of the literature shows that stereotype rebound effects are often tested with target groups for which participants may feel entitled to express stereotypes (Gordijn et al., 2004; Dumont et al., 2003). In addition, more attention has been paid to moderators of stereotype rebound associated with the perceiver, such as self-salience (Macrae et al., 1998), motivation (Wyer, 2006; Plant & Devine, 1998), and practice effects
(Moskowitz, Gollwitzer, Wasel, & Schaal, 1999) than to fundamental differences in perceivers’ beliefs about target groups. Research results show that perceivers avoid activating stereotypes of outgroups such as women and the elderly (Moskowitz et al.; Kawakami et al., 2000). For example, Wyer et al. (1998) found when participants avoided using their stereotypes of African American targets (due to prevailing personal and social norms), no rebound effects were observed; however, social stereotypes were freely used by the same participants when target groups were unspecified (stereotyping was not avoided). Perceivers appear to be vigilant in monitoring stereotype use and may be reluctant to activate and apply stereotypes for specific social outgroups. Therefore characteristics of the target group, reflected in perceivers’ stereotypes, may moderate the occurrence of stereotype rebound.
Since rebound effects can be conceptualised as heightened levels of stereotypical thinking, a more in-depth examination of stereotype content may shed some light on inconsistent rebound findings. Stereotype content comprises perceivers’ beliefs and stored knowledge about others, and qualitative aspects of this information have been found to profoundly influence how people subsequently judge and respond to others (Dovidio, Kawakami, Johnson, Johnson, & Howard, 1997; Wilson, Lindsey, &
Schooler, 2000). To date, research has focused more upon processes than on contentin stereotyping and associated influences upon information processing (Leyens, Yzerbyt, & Schadron, 1992; Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000), but both content and process aspects of stereotypes must be considered to fully understand stereotype function. The primary emphasis in research has been on social stereotypes that are harmful, negative and associated with biased judgments that underlie prejudice and discrimination. However,
consensual stereotypes of many social outgroups are seldom wholly negative, but instead contain a mixture of attributes that can be either positive or negative (Glick & Fiske, 2001). Indeed, Fiske (2004) claims that most stereotypes are ambivalent,
containing a complex mixture of both hostile and favourable beliefs about others. Mixed content stereotypes may lead to different kinds of prejudice and discrimination than those stereotypes that are purely negative. Thus, this content difference may affect the way rebound is expressed.
Warmth and Competence
Recent work by Fiske, Cuddy, and Glick (2007) shows that many social stereotypes are differentiated in terms of warmth and competence. Asch (1946) argued that perceivers try to develop coherent impressions about other people and that they do this in a rapid manner with great ease. Judgments of others can lead to a “halo” effect, whereby positive or negative judgments of a subset of the target member’s traits or behaviours can influence subsequent judgments and the evaluation becomes associated with the general impression. Asch showed that central traits such as “cold” or “warm” had the power to influence how other trait information was interpreted: for example, “warm” followed by “determined” might be seen as “persistent” whereas “cold” followed by “determined” might be seen as “stubborn”. Similarly, Nisbett and Wilson (1977) found that initial positive or negative judgments formed upon observing certain behaviours are spread to other characteristics of the individual (even if the characteristics were
irrelevant to the behaviour being observed). Therefore, although perceivers may change and adjust their theories or stereotypes about others, new information about central traits is likely to be more influential in changing one’s theories about others than peripheral traits. Judgments of warmth, a central trait, might therefore underlie perceivers’ unconscious positive or negative evaluations of target groups (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995) and the registration of affective information without conscious awareness (Murphy, Monahan, & Zajonc, 1995).
Judgments of warmth may also operate as an “emotional response category” (Niedenthal & Halberstadt, 2000); such categories allow perceivers to group together traits that evoke the same emotional response. Based on a spreading activation model (whereby activated information makes associated information more accessible), evaluative coherence is expected to simplify impression-making processes (e.g., Quinn,
Hugenberg, & Bodenhausen, 2003; Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 1998). Emotional valence and affective reactions (e.g., judgments of warmth and sincerity) are processed automatically upon interaction with the target person (Bargh, Chaiken, Govender, & Pratto, 1992; Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986); it was argued by Zajonc (1980) that affective reactions can even occur prior to cognitive appraisals. Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998) contend that because stereotypes are highly functional in simplifying complex social environments, stereotypes that contain evaluatively
consistent information are likely to be of more benefit to the perceiver.
Stereotypes associated with positive or negative judgments of target group members are important because they predispose perceivers to behave in a manner consistent with stereotypic judgments, even when evaluations are unintended (Bargh, 1999; Bargh, Chaiken, Raymond, & Hymes, 1996) and immediate (Ambady & Rosenthal, 1992). For example, participants have been shown to interview Caucasian and African-American job applicants differently (Word, Zanna, & Cooper, 1974). Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996, Experiment 2) primed stereotypes of the elderly in some of their participants with scrambled sentence tasks and found that those primed with this stereotype were more likely to walk slowly than the control participants and thus behave in line with stereotypic judgments of the elderly. Similarly, Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1996) primed participants with stereotypes of professors or soccer hooligans and found they either behaved respectively more intelligently, answering more questions correctly, or unintelligently. Behavioural responses like those described above illustrate that when trait concepts that are part of the stereotype are activated, they lead to subsequent stereotype-consistent behaviours and provide evidence of a “direct, automatic link between perceptual and behavioral representations” (Chen & Bargh, 1997, p. 545). Specifically, positively evaluated stimuli have been found to lead to spontaneous
approach behaviours, while negatively evaluated stimuli elicit avoidance actions (Chen & Bargh, 1999; Duckworth, Bargh, Garcia, & Chaiken, 2002). Accordingly, perceivers who experience stereotype rebound, with increased cognitive accessibility of stereotypes following suppression, can be expected, in comparison with non-suppressors, to make judgments and practise approach or avoidance behaviour that directly reflects the content of their stereotypes. When target groups are judged differently in terms of high or low warmth, perceivers who suppress unwanted stereotypes may respond in different ways.
To explore the possibility of different rebound effects for different target groups, two social outgroups representing opposite ends of the economic spectrum in a developing country were chosen as target groups for this experiment: the poor and the wealthy. Consistent with predictions from the stereotype content model, it was expected that stereotypes of the two target groups, the developing-world poor and the African wealthy, would contain dimensions of either low warmth/high competence (African wealthy) or high warmth/low competence (African poor) and that such qualitative differences would determine whether or not rebound effects were observed and how rebound effects differed for each target group.
Three hypotheses were tested in this experiment. First, in line with results from earlier experiments it was predicted that participants who suppressed stereotypes of either target group, poor or wealthy males from the developing world, would experience increased cognitive accessibility of their stereotypes; a stereotype rebound effect. Participants were expected to show rebound effects in one or two ways: either as higher levels of stereotypical phrasing in second essays and/or as seating positions in relation to a large poster of a target group member. Essay writing was regarded as an explicit measure of rebound (i.e., a controlled cognitive process), while seating positions were seen as implicit measures of rebound (i.e., unconsciously determined behaviour).
Second, as described in the stereotype content model, it was predicted that rebound effects in seating positions for the poor condition, might reflect approach rather than
avoidance behaviour. In line with results from Experiment 2, participants whose suppressed stereotypes of the developing-world poor appear to contain elements of warmth, a primary driver of behaviour, were expected to choose seats closer to the poster of a target group member than those chosen by the control group. Conversely, it was expected that rebound effects in seating positions for the wealthy condition, might reflect avoidancerather than approach behaviour, suppressors seating themselves further away from the poster of a wealthy person.
Third, it was predicted that because it may be less acceptable to stereotype the aid- related poor, participants would constrain the expression of these stereotypes, whereas they would be more willing to express their stereotypes of the wealthy target group. Specifically, participants were expected to write more stereotypical phrases when writing about the wealthy than the poor.
Method Participants and Design
Participants were 40 undergraduate students from Massey University, Auckland campus. Since the psychology students who took part in the first two experiments did not appear to make extensive use of stereotypes when writing essays, students from the business school were also sought; business students have been found to use stereotypes more readily than students from the social sciences (Guimond & Palmer, 1996).
Students were therefore recruited for the current experiment from both business and psychology schools during lectures and tutorials. Each participant was required to attend the laboratory for two sessions of twenty-five minutes each, a ‘poor’ condition and a ‘wealthy’ condition conducted approximately three or four weeks apart. Wealthy and poor conditions were counter-balanced across participants: half were exposed to the poor condition in their first visit and the wealthy on their second, while the other half attended the wealthy condition first and the poor condition second. Students visited the Psychology Laboratory individually and were reimbursed $15 for their time and travel expenses.
Of the 40 participants who took part in the two experiments, only 35 provided a
complete set of data. Two participants attended only one session, the poor, a further two did not choose a seat for either the poor or wealthy condition, and one chose a seat for the poor condition but not for the wealthy.
Materials
This experiment was based upon the methodology used by Macrae et al. (1994). In the poor condition students viewed pictures of poor African men featured in an
impoverished environment (see Appendix H), while in the wealthy condition wealthy African men (see Appendix I) were featured in an African market. A graphic designer transposed the faces of the men so that the same face was used in both conditions, the face of the man in the first picture in the poor condition also featured as the first picture in the wealthy condition. A computer program written specifically for this experiment guided students though the experiment, allocated participants to groups, displayed images, timed the essays and automatically recorded these into numbered files.
A change was also made in the seating measure; instead of using the belongings of an African person, a large poster (45cm x 60cm) featuring either a poor or wealthy person in an African context was placed at the end of the row of eight chairs. While in
Experiment 2, participants were asked to take a seat with the belongings of an African person in full view, ‘ prepare for contact’, in Experiment 3 a subtle, less obvious measure was chosen because participants were required to attend the laboratory on two occasions for the two conditions. In this way, it was possible to derive a measure of intergroup behaviour without arousing suspicion. However, as results show, there was a real risk that a poster was a less effective mechanism for producing stereotype rebound than a potential meeting with a target member.
Procedure
Participants attended the laboratory on two occasions, either a poor or a wealthy
condition. They were briefed on arrival and signed consent forms. On both occasions the suppressgroup only was instructed, via the computer, to refrain from using stereotypes when writing their essay, but received no such instruction before writing their second essays. Instructions for suppressors were the same as in Experiments 1 and 2. Each session required participants to view a picture of an African person and write a short five-minute essay on the computer describing a typical day in the life of the target person. A second picture was accompanied by the same instructions. When the two essays were completed, instructions on the computer directed each participant to go through to the waiting room, where there was a row of eight adjacent chairs, to take a seat, and fill out the checklist form while waiting for the experimenter. A large poster placed on the end wall adjacent to the seats featured either a poor or wealthy African person in an African setting. The seat chosen by the participant was a measure of social distancing that was taken as an indication of the rebound effect. It was predicted that, following a period of suppression, the suppressgroup would experience higher levels of stereotypical thinking in their second essays and/or distance themselves further from the poster. The experimenter noted the seat chosen, debriefed the participant and the
experiment ended.
Essays were rated for their stereotypical content using a 9-point rating scale: 1 (not at all stereotypic) and 9 (very stereotypic) by two independent raters who were blind to the experimental conditions. The level of agreement for the two essays in the poorcondition was r (39)= .68, p < .01 (two-tailed) and in the wealthycondition was r (37)= .56, p < .01 (two-tailed). Scores were collapsed for raters and a single measure computed for stereotypical phrasing for each essay.
Results
Stereotype rebound was assessed with two dependent measures: stereotypical phrasing in participants’ second essays, and chosen seating positions. To investigate stereotype
rebound effects using the essay measure, data were subjected to a 2 (task instruction: suppress, control) x 2 (target: poor, wealthy) mixed factorial ANOVA with repeated measures on the last factor. Stereotype rebound was measured in suppressors’ seating positions by conducting a 2 (task instruction: suppress, control) x 2 (target: poor, wealthy) mixed factorial ANOVA, again with repeated measures on the last factor.
Manipulation check
A preliminary analysis was run to ensure that participants in the suppress group had, as instructed, complied with instructions and suppressed stereotypical thoughts. A 2 (task instruction: suppress, control) x 2 (target: poor, wealthy) mixed factorial ANOVA conducted on the levels of stereotypical phrasing written in the first essays, did not show a main effect of task instruction or an interaction of target and task instruction (Fs<1). Simple effects analyses showed that there was also no difference for either the poor or wealthy target groups when analysed separately (both Fs <1). However, in the poor condition, an examination of the descriptive statistics (see Table 4) showed that, as instructed, the suppress group did use less stereotypical material in their writing than the control group (M = 5.92, SD = 1.71 vs. M = 6.26, SD = 1.46). Unexpectedly, in the wealthy condition, the suppress group wrote slightly higher levels of stereotypical phrasing in their first essays than the control group (M = 4.97, SD = 1.40 vs. M = 4.84,
SD = 1.34). A main effect of target was found (F (1,36) = 8.72, p < .006, ηp2= .20, OP =
.82): essays about the poor target contained more stereotypical material than those about the wealthy.
Rebound Effects in Essays
Results from the mixed factorial ANOVA conducted on participants’ second essays for both poor and wealthy conditions revealed a main effect of target (F (1,36) = 25.33, p < .001, ηp2= .41, OP = 1.00) - the essays of the poor contained more stereotypical material
than those about the wealthy targets (Ms = 6.09 vs. 4.75, SDs = .93 vs. 1.56). This main effect was qualified by a significant target x instruction interaction (F (1,36) = 6.58, p =
.015, ηp2= .16, OP = .70). Simple effects analyses revealed opposing non-significant
trends for the two target conditions; when writing about the poor, suppressors wrote less stereotypical essays than the controls (F (1,36) = 2.89, p = .098, ηp2= .07, OP = .38)
while the opposite was the case for wealthy targets (F (1,36) = 3.10, p = .08, ηp2= .08,
OP = .40). Thus, the essay data suggest that rebound may have occurred for both target groups although the nature of the rebound differed for the two groups. Whereas the wealthy target may have elicited standard rebound, with greater stereotyping by
suppressors than controls, the poor target may have elicited lower levels of stereotyping in suppressors.
Table 4
Mean Ratings of Passage Stereotypicality for Poor and Wealthy Essays as a Function of Task Instruction
Poor Target Wealthy Target
Essays Suppress Instructions Standard Instructions Suppress Instructions Standard Instructions 1 5.92 (1.71)* 6.26 (1.46) 4.97 (1.40) 4.84 (1.34) 2 5.84 (0.94) 6.34 (0.87) 5.18 (1.59) 4.32 (1.45)
*Standard deviations are in brackets
Rebound Effects in Seating
Dependent measures were suppressors’ second essays and/or seating positions chosen by suppressors when responding to either poor or wealthy target people. It is possible that suppressors may have continued to suppress their stereotypes in their second essays, and if so, rebound effects might emerge in the seating positions. A second mixed
factorial ANOVA was therefore conducted using participants’ seating positions. The analysis revealed a main effect of target (F (1,32) = 5.88, p = .021, ηp2= .16, OP = .65):
overall, participants sat closer to the poster of the poor target than the wealthy target (Ms
= 5.18 vs. 5.59, SDs = 1.14 vs. 1.05). This main effect was qualified by a target x instruction interaction (F (1,32) = 7.26, p = .011, ηp2= .19, OP = .74). Simple effects
analyses revealed a non-significant trend for the poor target suppressors to sit closer to the target poster than the controls (F (1,36) = 3.11, p = .087, ηp2= .09, OP = .40) (see
Table 5). While the descriptive statistics showed that suppressors of the wealthy target sat farther away from the poster than controls (Ms = 5.80 vs. 5.42, SDs = .86 vs. 1.17) this pattern did not reach significance (F (1,36) = 1.10, p = .302, ηp2= .03, OP = .17).
Thus, the seating data show that reverse rebound occurred for the poor target condition while no rebound occurred for wealthy target condition.