Suppression and hypothesis testing: does suppressing stereotypes during interactions help to avoid confirmation biases?

Abstract

Recent work indicates that trying not to think in stereotypical terms increases the accessibility of stereotypical information, which paradoxically results in more stereotypical judgments. The present study translated the colour-blindness ideology in general and stereotype suppression research in particular into an hypothesis testing setting. Participants who were asked to suppress their stereotypes when selecting a set of questions were indeed less guided by ambient stereotypes than control participants, thereby showing a reduction of the classical confirmation orientation in question preferences. Still, compared to control participants, suppressors also later reported more polarized impressions such that consistent targets were seen as more stereotypical and inconsistent ones as more counter-stereotypical. Moreover, group evaluations were more stereotypical for suppressors than for controls indicating that suppression had led to stronger activation of the stereotypical representation. Results are discussed in light of the prevailing belief regarding the benefits of political correctness and colour-blindness. Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Social perceivers often interact with people about whom they do not know much. In such situations, preconceptions help partners getting acquainted because they provide useful information for dealing with the immediate interaction. For example, given current beliefs about the likely personalities of, respectively, hairdressers and engineers, people will probably not choose the same topics of discussion when interacting with a member of one or the other group. Clearly thus, people try their best to behave

A question of compensation: The social life of the fundamental dimensions of social perception.

“…Rather, we wanted to use this study to begin the process of examining hypothesis confirmation processes of the compensation effect. Accordingly, building on a well-established procedure in the research on hypothesis confirmation (Dumont et al, 2003;Snyder & Swann, 1978), we asked participants to select from among a set of questions that they would find most useful in gaining further information about the described group members. Our hypothesis was that the questions selected by participants would reflect the compensation effect.…”

“…Questions. Participants learned that they had to create two questionnaires, one for the blue group and the other for the green group (for a similar procedure, see Dumont et al, 2003). The purpose of these questionnaires was ostensibly to gather further information about the two groups.…”

New knowledge for old credences: Asymmetric information search about in‐group and out‐group members

“…Despite the great interest in social hypothesis testing, most research on this subject has focused on the investigation of personality traits and interpersonal impression formation, and only a few studies have adopted a group or intergroup perspective (Cameron & Trope, 2004; Dumont, Yzerbyt, Snyder, Mathieu, Comblain, & Scaillet, 2003; Leyens & Yzerbyt, 1992; Trope & Thompson, 1997). The aim of the present research was to investigate how social stereotypes affect the information‐gathering process of in‐group and out‐group members to determine if people adopt asymmetrical information search strategies.…”

The Effects of Instructions on Reasoning with Stereotypical Premises

“…We would also predict that the difference between the stereotypical and counter-stereotypical premises would decrease, if not disappear. However, several studies have shown that, when given instructions requiring them not to think in stereotypical terms, participants gave more stereotypical judgments, indicating that the accessibility of stereotypical information can increase under explicit instructions (Dumont et al, 2003;Macrae, Bodenhausen, Milne, & Jetten, 1994). If it is assumed that one of the effects of logical instructions is to promote processing of premises that is not sensitive to empirical knowledge, then we would be less certain about this second prediction.…”

“…This is a particularly interesting topic, since stereotypes strongly influence expectations of behaviour according to the group to which a subject belongs (Fiske, 2000;Leyens, Yzerbyt, & Schadron, 1994;Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000). Research has shown that the influence of stereotypes is difficult to undo, even when explicit instructions are given (Dumont, Yzerbyt, Snyder, Mathieu, Comblain, & Scaillet, 2003). Thus understanding how people reason with stereotypes can provide some useful insights into the nature of the interaction between reasoning competence and non-logical factors postulated by dual-process theories.…”