European Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 21,349-357 (1991)

Short Note

Memory for stereotype-related material - a replication study with real-life social

groups

IGNACIO CAN0 Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain

NICK HOPKINS* Dundee, Scotland

and MIR RABIUL ISLAM Bristol, England

Abstract

This paper reports u study comparing the memorability of information that either con- firmed, dirconfirmd, or was irrelevant to, particular reul-life social group stereotypes. Memory for both stereotype-con$rming and stereotype-dkonfirming material was enhanced reiative to that for material which was stereotype-irrelevant. Further, there were no dflerences between the memory for stereotype-confirming and -a%confirming information. Implications for stereotype stability and change are noted

Researchers have long been interested in the effects of stereotypes upon memory and the implications that this may have for processes of stereotype change; if infor- mation that confirms stereotypes is better remembered than other information, a ‘built-in’ bias may operate to sustain stereotypes. For example, Rothbart, Evans and Fulero (1979) led subjects to expect members of a hypothetical group to be either friendly or intellectual. In a memory task completed after members of the group were described, subjects recalled more behaviours congruent with their expec- tancy.

However, whilst much research has investigated memory for materials which vary in their relationship to subjects’ expectations, it should be noted that many studies do not use information related to group stereotypes but to individuals (Hastie and Kumar, 1979). This is important as it has been shown that memory performance is Werent according to whether the stimuli are individuals or group members (Srull,

*Reprint requests The authors wish to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft ofthispaper.

0046-2772/9 1/040349-09%05.00 0 1991 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received21 September 1990 Accepted 12 April 1991

350 1. Cano, N. Hopkins and M. R. Islam

1981; Wyer et QZ., 1984; Stern et ~ l . , 1984). Further it should be noted that where studies have used groups as stimuli they have normally been groups and ‘stereotypes’ created in the experiment (Rothbart et al., 1979) and may thmfore be more relevant to the dynamics of stereotype formation rather than stereotype perpetuation (Hew- tone, 1989; Higgins and Bargh, 1987). Although there may well be similarities between these processes further research into the effects of well-formed social beliefs (e.g., the stereotypes associated with ‘real-life’ social groups) would allow these to be demonstrated rather than assumed.

It may also be observed that there is some ambiguity concerning the issue of ‘stereotype-incongruency’. For some this refers to the opposite of the stereotype (e.g., O’Sullivan and Durso, 1984) whilst elsewhere it means typical of another group (e.g., Brewer et al., 1981; Hiegins and King, 1981; Stangor and Ruble, 1989). For still others it refers to material that does not belong to the group stereotype (e.g., Cohen, 1981). To avoid ambiguity we prefer to think of the relationship between material and stereotypes in terms of a single dimension (Hastie, 1981); at one pole lies material that forms part of the stereotype, at the other lies material that contradicts or d i s c o n h the stereotype, in the middle lies material that bears no relationship with the stereotype (termed stereotype ‘conpent’, ‘incongruent’, and ‘irrelevanty respectively). This categorization stresses the need to examine memory effects across the whole range of stereotype-relatedness (i.e., from ‘congruent’, through ‘irrelevant’ to ‘incongruent’) and has a particular importance for theories of stereotype perpetu- ation which emphasise a stereotype-confirming memory bias; an adequate test of a memory bias in favour of stereotype-confirming material should not only compare memory for ‘congruent’ material with ‘irrelevant’ material but also with material which is strictly counter-stereotypical (i.e., ‘stereotype-incongruent’). We would also note the utility of examining these effects in one study; whilst research has established the relatively superior recall of ‘stereotypGcongruent’ as opposed to ‘stereotype- irrelevant’ material (Rothbart, Evans and Fulero, 1979; Hamilton and Rose, 1980: experiment 1 and 2) research findings concerning the relative superiority of ‘stereo- type-congruent’ and ‘stereotype-incongrumty material show less consensus (Cohen, 1981, demonstrates superior memory for the former, Hastie and Kumar, 1979, and Srull, 1981, for the latter).

Our study compares the memorability of materials which exhibit different degrees of association with a set of real-life social groups in a design which seeks to control for the effect of a range of extraneous factors which may influence item-memorability (such as their frequency, phonetic or semantic characteristics; Chapman, 1967; Chap man and Chapman, 1969). These extraneous factors pose serious problems for research using real social groups because the standard experimental controls are no longer appropriate or practical. For example, one procedure is to use the same materials for all subjects but change the expectation concerning the group (e.g., Hastie and Kumar, 1979; Rothbart et aZ., 1979), yet this is only possible with experi- mentally induced group images. Another is to use the same materials for all the groups so that what is ‘congruent’ for one is ‘irrelevant’ for the others (e.g., Wyer and Martin, 1986; Brewer, Dull and Lui, 1981). A problem with this approach is that the ‘baseline’ (against which stereotype-mediated memory is to be measured) is essentially contingent upon the images of the groups that act as the control. Conse- quently, the status and meaning of this ‘baseline’ may be rather unclear as a variety of factors (such as the overall evaluation of the group) may have effects. A further

‘Memory for stereotype-related materiaI 35 1

problem of such a procedure here is the difficulty of finding the right materials to control for the full range of materials (‘congruent’, ‘irrelevant’ and ‘incongruent’).

In this study two experimental conditions allowed us to control for the fact that the materials could be differentially remembered due to their idiosyncratic properties rather than because of their degree of stereotype-relatedness. Whilst the to-barecailed materials were the same in both conditions, in the one they were attached to real social groups whilst in the other they were attached to artificial groups (for which no group stereotype existed). Memory for the materids m this second condition provides a baseline against which memory in the first condition may be compared. It was predicted that materials in the ‘real group’ condition which were either congru- ent or incongruent with the stereotypes associated with those real groups would be better recalled than the same adjectives in the ‘artificial group’ condition. No effects of condition were predicted for materials that were irrelevant to the real group stcrcotypes.

Subjects and procedure

91 subjects (the majority of whom were prospective students on a university open day visit, the others being volunteers from a first year university general psychology course) took part in small groups. The allocation of the groups to condition was random.

The research was introduced as a project on ‘how people form impressions about other people’’ and the to-be-presented materials described as coming from a pre- vious (interview-based) study of people from a variety of professional, religious, social and national groups. Subjects were told to read a series of adjectival descrip- tions and try to form an impression of what each group was like.

In each condition a video presented the adjectival descriptions of 4 groups. Each adjective’s presentation time was 3 seconds with an interval of 5 seconds (during which time the screen was blank). In the Artificial Group (AG) condition the groups were identified by a letter. In the Real Group (RG) condition they were also identified as specific real-life groups. As the same adjectives were used in each condition the sole difference between the two conditions was that in the former, the adjectives were associated with a letter and a ‘real-life’ social group (‘Members of group B - Football Fans - were noisy’) whilst in the latter, the adjectives were associated with groups described only by a letter (‘Members of group B were noisy’). In a subsequent questionnaire, subjects were to recall these descriptive adjectives.

Selection of groups and attributes

Three groups that have relatively clear stereotypic attributes were used in the RG condition; Football Fans, Salesmen, and Japanese. The adjectives were selected from

’ Impression fornutwn btructions. Our decision to use this formuiation rather than a ‘memory’ set of instructions was based on the argument that impression instructions may be somewhat nearer to most everyday contexts where one m l y consciously sets out to rrmember information about others.

352 I. Cano, N. Hopkinsand M. R. Islam

pre-testing in which others (drawn from the same population as our subjects) uscd 9-point scales to rate the applicability of a Series of adjectives to thesc groups. Using this measure of stereotype-relatedness, adjectives were selected as ‘stereotype- congruent’ if their mean rating was 6.5 or higher with stereotype-incongruent adjec- tives 3.5 or lower. Stereotype-irrelevant adjectives were those closest to themidpoint. Each group was described by four adjective statements: one ‘congruent’, one ‘incon- gruent’ and two ‘irrelevant’. For each group the number of positive and negative adjectives was balanced as follows; one of the irrelevant adjectives was positive, the other negative. Of the stereotype-related adjectives one was positive and the other negative. For two groupings the congruent adjective was positive and the incongruent adjective negative; for the third grouping the conpent adjective was negative and the incongruent adjective positive.

Two additional adjectival statements describing a fourth group (RG = ‘Nurses’; AG = ‘A’) were inctuded (one at the beginning and one at the end) as Wkr’ items to control for primacy and recency effects. “here were therefore a total of 14 adjectival statements2.

Dependent measures

An 8-page questionnaire administered following the video presentation required sub- jects to write down the adjectives used to describe each of the three groups (no questions were asked concerning the filler group; Nurses / ‘group A’). After this free-recall task subjects were asked to rate the importance that they gave to these adjectival dimensions when judging other people in general. A third set of measures recorded their perceptions of the extent to which the group descriptions they had seen were positivehegative, and subjects in the Real Group condition rated the positivityhegativity of the real-life social groups. Subjects in the Artificial Group condition were asked to report if they had thought of specific real-life groups (and if so, which) as they formed their impressions.

At the end, subjects were asked about the hypotheses they entertained as to the purpose of the study. No subjects indicated that they had ‘penetrated’ the cover story and none in the AG condition correctly identihd the groups as r e f a g to the groups used in the RG condition. In fact, few thought of any specific groups at all.

When analysed in a one between-subjects factor (experimental condition) and a one within-subjects factor (dejpee of stereotype-relatedness) ANOVA, the key prediction was of an interaction; whilst memory for the stereotype-irrelevant materials should be constant across experimental conditions, memory for stereotypscongruent and stereotypc-incongruent materials should be greater in the Real Group condition relative to the Artificial Group condition.

a Primmy and Rcccncy efects. It should also be noted that even if thm were to be strong primacy or recency dfcas that go beyond these ‘filkr’ items these should occur in both experiwntaI conditions and so an controlled for.

Memory for stereotype-relatedmaterial 353

RESULTS

Before considering the main body of data the coding of the free recall data requires explanation. Three categories of response were coded; i. correct recall (adjective recalled and correctly ascribed to relevant group). ii. misattribution (adjective recalled but incorrectly ascribed to another group), iii. invention (a non-presented adjective is reported). Particular attention was paid to the nature of the misattributions; some adjectives might be particularly prone to being misattributed because they were per- ceived as stereotypically-related to more than one of the stimulus groups. From the pre-testing it seemed that only one adjective (‘bossy’) fell into this category. Though chosen as an ‘irrelevant’ adjective for the ‘Japanese’ group it was seen by subjects as moderately stereotypical of ‘Salesmen’. Analyses were therefore carried out with and without this adjective; as there were no differences in these analyses we report those including this adjective.

Below we report the total number of correct recalls, misattributions and inventions both as absolute numbers and as percentages of the total responses produced in each condition; i. correct recalls; a higher proportion of correct recalls was found in the Real Group condition (RG = 250 or 82.2%) compared to the Artificial Group condition (AG = 175 or 59.7%); ii. misattributions; a lower proportion of misattribu- tions was found in the Real Group condition (RG = 25 or 8.2%) compared to the Artificial Group condition (AG = 89 or 30.4%); iii. inventions; there was no difference in the number of inventions observed in the two conditions (29 in each, or 9.5% of RG responses and 9.9% of AG responses).

Analysis of the ‘correct recalls’ used scales formed by summing the number of correct recalls for each adjective types; i.e., one scale referred to the ‘stereotype- congruent’ adjectives (range = &3), one to the ‘stereotype-incongruent’ adjectives (range = 0-3)’ and one to the ‘stereotype-irrelevant’ adjectives (range = 0-6; n.b., to allow easy comparisons with the other scales this was divided by a factor of two). These were analysed as levels of a ‘within-subjects’ factor in a 2 X 3 ANOVA fexperimental condition’ (Real Group / Artificial Group) X ‘stereotype-relevancy’ (‘stereotype-congruent’, ‘stereotype-incongruent’, ‘stereotype-irrelevant’)]. The cell means are presented in Figure 1. Main dects of experimental condition [F (1’89) = 35.53,~ < 0.0011 and stereotype-

relatedness [F(2, 178) = 24.14, p < 0.001] emerged. These were quaMed by their signiscant interaction F(2, 178) = 11.97, p < 0.0011. The nature of this interaction was explored by analysing the simple effects of condition for each level of the ‘within- subjects’ factor. As predicted these analyses revealed significant simple effects of condition for the ‘stereotype-congruent’ [F(1,89) = 45.05, p < 0.001; AG = 1.06, RG = 2.143, and ‘stereotype-incongruent’ fF(1,89) = 19.14,~ < 0.001; AG = 0.65, RG = 1.401 but not for the ‘stereotype-irrelevant’ material [F(1,89) = 1.66, n.s.; AG = 0.97, RG = 1.141.

The differential effect of experimental condition upon the congruent and incon- gruent materials were tested in a 2 x 2 ANOVA with the within-subjects factor’s two levels refemng to the Werent forms of stereotype-related material (congruent/ incongruent). Here, s i m m t main effects of experimental condition F(1,89) = 50.03, p < 0.0011 and stimulus type [F( 1,89) = 30.96, p < 0.0011 emerged. However, the interaction proved to be non-significant [F(1,89) = 2.46, ns.] showing that the

354 I. Gmo, N. Hopkins and M. R Islam

Congruent

nrtificiol Group

Condition

Real Group

Figure 1. Recall of congrutnt, incongruent and irrelevant adjectives by condition

Memory for stereotype-related material 355

improvement of recall in the Real Group condition relative to the Artificial Group condition was not significantly different for the congruent and incongruent material.3

Personal importance ascribed to adjectives

There was no notable association between the personal importance ascribed to a dimension and the memorability of material related to it. Ofthe twelve point-biserial correlations between subjects’ rating scales and correct recall for each adjective, only two were significant (one positive, one negative).

Evaluative impression of the experimental gropps There were no significant differences in the evaluation of the groups according to the information presented between the two experimental conditions.

DISCUSSION

As predicted memory for stereotype-irrelevant materials was d a t e d by condition, whilst memory for both stereotype-congruent and -incongruent materials was (such that recall for stereotype-related materials is greater in the Real Group condition than for the corresponding materials in the Artificial Group condition). Further, our analyses show no significant differences in the improvement of recall for stereo- typecongruent and stereotype-incongruent materials.

Before considering the implications of these data further, an alternative account of their patterning should be considered. Given the nature of our design it might be argued that the improved performance in the Real Group condition is because the imagery associated with such groups allows easier differentiation between the stimulus groups. In other words it might be the case that the Artificial Group subjects retrieve the same number of adjectives as the Real Group subjects, but are confused as to which adjective is associated with which group because of the indistinguishability of the letter-defined groups. If this were to apply to the stereotype-related material in particular it might be the case that the patterning to our data is caused by a more accurate attribution of adjective to group. However, although it is true that there are more ‘misattributions’ in the Artificial Group than in the Real Group condition this alternative account of our data receives no support when the nature of these misattributions is investigattd; although it is easier to correctly attribute adjectives to real life social groups this does not apply differentially to stereotype- related and stcreotpirrelevant material and so cannot be held responsible for the patterning to our data. Instead our data do seem to require an interpretation in terms of the superior retrievability of stereotype-related material (whether -congruent or -incongruent) over stereotype-irrelevant material.

’ Item valence. Howard and Rothbart (1980) observe that memory for negative outgroup traits is higher than for positive outgroup traits. In our design. one in three ‘stmotyptcongruent’ and two in three ‘stemtype-incongmmt’ items arc negative. Consequently it might be argued that the mcmory for the ‘mcongrUent’ items is mediated and enhaaced by their negative valence rather than their Tnwngrucncy’. To control for the possible effects of this itan-valence imbalance, analysts were repcatad with a new measure which took account of the item-valence by increasing the weight of the evaluatively minor itan (thus the single positive ‘stereotype-incongruent and the single negative ‘stcreotypecongruent’ items received a double weighting). The results of these analyses were as before.

356 I. Cano, N. Hopkins and M. R Isiam

This study’s comparison of the effects of real social group stereotypes upon mater- ials which span the full range of stereotype-relatedness confirms that previous research is applicable to real social group stereotypes and illustrates the utility of locating materials along this dimension. Further, these data not only show clear effects of stereotypes upon memory according to its stereotype-relatedness but also show that there are no correlations between subjects’ ratings of the importance of certain dimm- sions of evaluation and their memory for material pertaining to these dimensions. This suggests that the dimensions of social perception and evaluation are determined by the stereotype associated with social groups ratha than by the observers’ personal value-systems. Consequently, these data showing that stereotype-congruent and stereotypeincongruent material are qual ly well remembered and are better remem- bered than stereotype-irrelevant material may be viewed as reflecting the process whereby stereotypes direct attention to certain dimensions; material relevant to those dimensions (whether congruent with the expectancy or incongruent with it) is particu- larly salient, whilst material irrelevant to such dimensions is not. Further and more tentative!y, it might be suggested that stereotypes may be reproduced, not simply through the neglect of stereotype-incongruent material, but through the focusing of attention upon particular dimensions rather than others; a focus upon the incon- gruent / discontinning information may in &tct reproduce the belief that this particu- lar dimension is a relevant dimension for the social perception of a certain group and may preclude the restructuring of the stereotype according to other dimensions even ifgroup members perform behaviours that am associated with these new dimen- sions. In other words, the memorability of the stereotype-incongruent matexid may both reflect and indeed contribute towards the continued priority of particular dimen- sions in social perception which makes the more fundammtal re-structunn ‘ gofthe stereotype’s content that much more diflicult.

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