Effects of stereotypes on decision making and information-processing strategies

In two experiments we investigated the effects of stereotyping on (a) reactions to a behavioral transgression and (b) the recall of information bearing on it. Subjects read a case file describing a transgression committed by a target (in Experiment 1, a job-related infraction; in Experiment 2, a criminal act). In some cases, the target's transgression was stereotypic of the target's ethnic group (conveyed through his name), and in other cases it was not. After reading the case file, subjects judged the likelihood that the transgression would recur and recommended punishment for the offense. These judgment data supported the hypothesis that stereotypes function as judgmental heuristics. Specifically, subjects used a stereotype of the target to infer the reasons for his transgression, and then based their punishment decisions on the implications of these inferences, considering other relevant information only when a stereotype-based explanation of the behavior was not available. However, recall data suggested that once a stereotype-based impression of the crime and its determinants was formed, subjects reviewed other available information in an attempt to confirm the implications of this impression. This led to differential recall of presented information, depending on whether its implications were consistent with, inconsistent with, or irrelevant to those of the stereotype.     

任务重要性对决策策略有效性的影响

研究以选择决策中决策任务的主观性为关注点,通过现场和实验室两项实验考察决策任务重要性对启发式和分析式策略有效性的影响。结果发现,在感知任务重要的情况下,采用分析式策略的被试决策后满意度高于采用启发式策略的被试;在感知任务不重要情况下,采用启发式策略的被试决策后满意度高于采用分析式策略的被试。研究表明,决策者感知到的任务重要与否会影响启发式和分析式两种决策策略的效果。     

Goal-performance relations: The effects of initial task complexity and task practice

The current study was conducted to examine the effects of task complexity and task practice (trials) on the goal-performance relationship. Specific, difficult goal assignments were predicted to enhance performance on a complex task only in later task practice. On a simpler task, specific, difficult goal assignments were predicted to enhance performance in early task practice and to disrupt performance in later task practice. The results indicated that goals exerted the predicted effects in the simple task version but had no effect in the complex task version. Possible relationships between amount of task practice and stages of skill acquisition are discussed for tasks differing in complexity. The results are also discussed in terms of cognitive resource demands and self-regulatory processes. Implications for the effectiveness of goals in relation to task complexity and task trials are also discussed.This article is based on the senior author's dissertation at the University of Minnesota. We thank Milt Hakel, Allan Jones, and Bart Osburn for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. The authors also wish to thank Phil Ackerman and John Campbell for their insightful comments throughout the research project and other members of the dissertation committee: Rich Arvey, Mark Davisson, and Marvin Dunnette.This research was partially supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Project LAMP, under the auspices of the Air Force Human Resources Laboratory (contract AFOSR-87-0234) and by a Research Initiation Grant from the University of Houston.Portions of this data were presented at the American Psychological Association Meetings, Atlanta, 1988.     

The impact of task complexity on information use in multi-attribute decision making

This study presents a process analysis of multi-attribute decision making. The decision problems concerned the selection of the most suitable candidate for a job opening. The problems varied in terms of complexity, i.e. the number of candidates and the number of attributes used to describe these alternatives. Results show that with an increasing number of alternatives, subjects (N = 48) used fewer attributes for the evaluation of alternatives, and made, on average, less references to the alternatives. The type of judgment most often used was absolute dimensional (comparison of an attribute to an absolute standard) and was used more often at the beginning than toward the end of the decision process. Overall, judgments were predominantly positive. The percentage of positive judgments decreased with increasing complexity, and toward the end of the decision process. Significantly more judgments, particularly positive ones, concerned the finally chosen alternative as compared to the rest of the alternatives. Finally, analysis of subjects' usage of decision rules revealed that increasing the number of alternatives resulted in an increasing use of elimination strategies. Implications of these findings for the design of decision aids will be discussed.     

Social and cognitive strategies for coping with accountability: conformity, complexity, and bolstering

This experiment tested predictions derived from a social contingency model of judgment and choice that identifies 3 distinctive strategies that people rely on in dealing with demands for accountability from important interpersonal or institutional audiences. The model predicts that (a) when people know the views of the audience and are unconstrained by past commitments, they will rely on the low-effort acceptability heuristic and simply shift their views toward those of the prospective audience, (b) when people do not know the views of the audience and are unconstrained by past commitments, they will be motivated to think in relatively flexible, multidimensional ways (preemptive self-criticism), and (c) when people are accountable for positions to which they feel committed, they will devote the majority of their mental effort to justifying those positions (defensive bolstering). The experiment yielded results supportive of these 3 predictions. The study also revealed some evidence of individual differences in social and cognitive strategies for coping with accountability.     

The influence of degree of expertise and objective task complexity on perceived task complexity and performance

Research on expertise has shown that nonexperts may sometimes outperform experts. Some researchers have suggested that superior performance by experts depends on the match between the experts' cognition and the demands of the task. The authors explored this issue using a quasi-experiment set in an organization. They examined how 3 sets of similar tasks that differ in their type of complexity can lead to differences in task perceptions and performance among experts, intermediates, and novices. The results suggest that experts and novices pay attention to different aspects of a task and that this affects both their perceptions of task complexity (i.e., task analyzability and variability) and their performance on the task.     

Social stereotypes and judgments of individuals: An instance of the base-rate fallacy

Social stereotypes may be defined as beliefs that various traits or acts are characteristic of particular social groups. As such, stereotypic beliefs represent subjective estimates of the frequencies of attributes within social groups, and so should be expected to “behave like” base-rate information within the context of judgments of individuals: specifically, individuating target case information should induce subjects to disregard their own stereotypic beliefs. Although the results of previous research are consisten with this prediction, no studies have permitted normative evaluation of stereotypic judgments. Because the hypothesis equates base rates and stereotypes, normative evaluation is essential for demonstrating equivalence between the base-rate fallacy and neglect of stereotypes in the presence of individuating case information. Two experiments were conducted, allowing for normative evaluation of effects of stereotypes on judgments of individuals. The results confirmed the hypothesis and established the generalizability of the effect across controversial and uncontroversial, socially desirable and socially underirable stereotypic beliefs. More generally, an examination of the differences between intuitive and normative statistical models of the judgment task suggest that the base-rate fallacy is but one instance of a general characteristic of intuitive judgment processes: namely, the failure to appropriately adjust evaluations of any one cue in the light of concurrent evaluations of other cues.     

Cognitive complexity of suppositional reasoning: An application of the relational complexity metric to the knight-knave task

An application of the Method of Analysis of Relational Complexity (MARC) to suppositional reasoning in the knight—knave task is outlined. The task requires testing suppositions derived from statements made by individuals who either always tell the truth or always lie. Relational complexity (RC) is defined as the number of unique entities that need to be processed in parallel to arrive at a solution. A selection of five ternary and five quaternary items were presented to 53 psychology students using a pencil and paper format. A computer-administered version was presented to 50 students. As predicted, quaternary problems were associated with higher error rates and longer response times than ternary problems. The computer-administered form was more difficult than the pencil and paper version of the test. These differences are discussed in terms of RC theory and alternative processing accounts. Together, they indicate that the relational complexity metric is a useful and parsimonious way to quantify complexity of reasoning tasks.     

The interactive effects of task complexity and participation on task performance: A field experiment

Goal-setting investigators have suggested that participation in the goal-setting process may be important for both motivational and cognitive reasons; however, goal-setting research has focused almost exclusively on the motivational aspect of participation, while generally ignoring the cognitive aspect. In an attempt to demonstrate the cognitive implications of participation, a field experiment was conducted with 40 computer programmers writing either a simple or a complex program. Half the participants were actively involved in discussing the project and in jointly determining the completion target, while the other half were simply assigned completion times of equivalent difficulty. It was hypothesized that, for complex programs, individuals participating in the discussion process would outperform individuals having assigned targets of similar difficulty. In contrast, for simple programs, it was expected that participation would have no effect on task performance. The data were analyzed using a 2 × 2 ANOVA procedure, and results strongly supported the hypothesized interaction. Discussion centered on the implications of the findings for future research in this area.     

Hypotheses,strategies, and stereotypes in discrimination learning

In the course of two experimentss groups of kindergarten, second, fourth, sixth grade and college students received several discrimination problems. Each trial with feedback was followed by a series of blank trials, which served as a probe for S's hypothesis. Ss responded systematically during the blank trials on about 90% of the probes. Beginning at the second grade they typically showed characteristic hypothesis-testing behavior, viz., keeping confirmed hypotheses, rejecting those disconfirmed, etc.     

Speed of information-processing in an inductive reasoning task and its relationship to psychometric intelligence

The relationship between psychometric intelligence (measured by means of Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices and two verbal subtests of the “Intelligenz-Struktur-Test-70”) and speed of information-processing in a newly developed computerized reaction time (RT) task called the Concept-Verification-Test (CVT) was investigated in a sample of 104 undergraduates. In this CVT, first, one of five possible conceptual rules is presented on a computer monitor. After reading the rule, the subject has to press a button and then one of 27 possible simple geometrical figures is presented, which either is an example of the concept or not. The subject has to press the true button if the presented figure is a positive instance of the rule or the false button if it is not. Two RTs were measured: The Comprehension Reaction Time (CRT) from the onset of the rule to the first button press and the Verification Reaction Time (VRT) from the onset of the figure until the response is given. The different complexity of the conceptual rules used also allowed us to examine the “complexity hypothesis” (i.e. correlations with intelligence should be higher for more complex RT tasks). As predicted, both CRTs and VRTs correlated negatively with intelligence, but we found no evidence for the validity of the complexity hypothesis.     

How status and stereotypes impact attributions to discrimination: The stereotype-asymmetry hypothesis

Past research suggests a status-asymmetry effect in attributions to discrimination such that people are more likely to make attributions to discrimination when the victim is from a lower status group than the perpetrator as compared to when the victim is from a higher status group than the perpetrator. The present studies test a stereotype-asymmetry effect, such that people are more likely to make attributions to discrimination when rejection occurs in a domain in which the victim is negatively rather than positively stereotyped. In Study 1 (observers) and Study 2 (victims), participants attributed rejection following a job interview to discrimination more when the victim was negatively stereotyped than when the victim was positively stereotyped. The stereotypicality of the domain was more important than the relative status of the victim and the perpetrator in determining judgments of discrimination. Thus stereotype-asymmetry is a key feature of the discrimination prototype.     

Age-related deficits in prospective memory: the influence of task complexity.

Younger and older subjects were asked to perform an action whenever target words occurred during a short-term memory task. The difficulty of this prospective memory task was manipulated by varying the delay preceding the occurrence of a target event and by varying the number of different target events. Age-related performance differences emerged when there were several different target events but not when there was one target event presented several times. Age-related performance differences, when they occurred, were associated with poorer retrospective memory for the target events. The results were interpreted in terms of a componential analysis of prospective memory, which assumes both similarities and differences between prospective and retrospective memory.     

Social science stereotypes of the Mexican American woman: policy implications for research

Reviewing the social science literature on the Chicana or Mexican American woman reveals a tenaciously perpetuated stereotype in which she appears almost exclusively as a submissive maternal figure. This may be related to an on-going trend to support studies of interpersonal or cultural characteristics of Chicanas and a resistance to undertake evaluations of systemic discrimination against Mexican American women. Almost all such studies investigated lower class samples, thus confounding ethnicity with socioeconomic status. The size and selection of many of the samples are questionable for purposes of generalizing to the entire population. Because many concepts are not defined in behavioral terms, they are seldom assessed empirically. The main concern is to what extent social scientists and the media are dictating norms to the Chicano family and to what extent are social planners and educators being influenced by these images. Examples from 3 distinct areas of research conclude with interpretations of Mexican American women that differ considerably from those with a heavy emphasis on cultural values: 1) demographic analyses of the 1970 Public Use Samples of the census that acknowledge the disadvantaged economic position of Mexican Americans; 2) studies that are beginning to measure empirically the family dynamics of Mexican Americans; and 3) family planning studies that attempt to examine the interaction between health care delivery systems and Mexican American contraceptive behavior. Trained and experienced Chicana researchers are needed to offset the male orientation and ethnocentrism that have characterized the social sciences.     

Information search and choice accuracy as a function of task complexity and task structure

Previous research has consistently shown that subjects switch to noncompensatory information search behaviour when task complexity increases. However, a rather specific class of tasks was used in these studies for which complete information search is not necessary to attain accurate task performance. In the present study information search behaviour, choice accuracy, subjective difficulty and confidence were registered under various task complexity conditions in two different task environments. In the first task, subjects had to make a choice between apartments; in the second task, a choice was required between baskets containing groceries of different prices. Forty subjects made choices by means of computerized information boards. The results showed effects of both complexity and type of task on information search behaviour. The lowest proportion of requested information and the most variable search pattern was observed for the apartments task in the complex task condition. However, accuracy remained constant over all complexity conditions. Together, the results suggest that under high task complexity levels subjects try to work smarter rather than harder. In the context of a choice requirement the specific task structure may allow them to switch to noncompensatory strategies while maintaining accuracy and avoiding the integration of large amounts of information.     

Age stereotypes in younger and older women: analyses of accommodative shifts with a sentence-priming task

A sentence-priming technique was used to examine whether older women (N = 39) share a more positive view of aging than younger women (N = 35). Situationally specified statements about older and younger persons were presented, followed either by a semantically related word, an unrelated word of the same valence, or a nonword. The accessibility of target words was measured by reaction times in a lexical decision task. Whereas a semantic priming effect for negatively connoted materials emerged for both groups, a priming effect for positively connoted materials was found for older women only. Furthermore, an affective priming effect was found for the older group, i.e., older women tended to respond relatively faster (slower) to semantically unrelated positive (negative) words following a sentence about an older person. The results are discussed within a coping-theoretical framework.