Stereotypes

In our social life, when we perceive others, we automatically activate social stereotypes that affect our actions and the way we interact with others (Bargh, 1994). The term stereotype comes from the printing trade; it is composed of the Greek words στέρεος (stereos = solid) and τύπος (typos = impression). Therefore, a stereotype is a metal printing plate, cast in a mold. Once it is molded, this plate is hardly deformable and every time it prints, it produces exactly the same impression. The use of the term stereotype in everyday life has retained the essential elements of this definition since it reveals the idea of a repetition of a phenomenon that is always identical (Doraï, 1988). The term stereotype in its psychological meaning, appeared in the social sciences for the first time by Lippmann (1922) who used the term in his book Public Opinion to account for the condensed, schematic, and simplified character of the opinions that exist among people. Lippmann described stereotypes as

“pictures in our heads…simplified descriptive categories by which we seek to classify a person or a group of individuals”. According to him, these pictures are indispensable for us to face the complexity of our social environment.

The modern definition in social psychology for stereotypes has not much changed, they are defined as mental representations of groups of people that reflect beliefs about group members’ characteristics. Stereotypes develop over time when people perceive their changing environments, interpret the perceived information, and then encode it in memory (Cuddy & Fiske, 2002). Even though, from a social point of view, they are seen as rigid and oversimplified (Rust & See, 2010), stereotypes serve to reduce the amount of stimulation and

information coming from the outside world and provide us with the missing information about a person to guide our behavior during a social interaction. Consequently, their function is to preserve our cognitive resources and to organize our perception of the complex social reality (Oakes, Haslam, & Turner, 1994; Macrae, Milne, & Bodenhausen, 1994). Thus, even though stereotypes are accurate or not, they provide a great deal of information with a minimum amount of cognitive effort and they guide social behavior. Thus, categorization is simpler and relatively effortless than individuation (Brewer, 1988; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990; Hugenberg, Young, Bernstein, & Sacco, 2010).

Stereotypes are often understood as related with prejudice and discrimination but they are still different concepts; stereotypes are the most cognitive component whereas prejudice is the affective component of stereotyping, and discrimination is the behavioral component (Fiske, 1998). Accordingly, stereotypes reflect beliefs about group members’

characteristics, prejudice represents the emotional response, and discrimination refers to actions toward this group.

1.2.1. Stereotype activation

Several studies have found that stereotypes are activated in an automatic way (Blair &

Banaji, 1996; Devine, 1989; Wang et al., 2015). For instance, Devine (1989) suggested that the presence of a member of a stereotyped group is sufficient to automatically activate the respective stereotype even for people who do not personally endorse the stereotype. In the second experiment of her paper, words related to the cultural stereotype of blacks were presented in an implicit priming paradigm. The results confirmed that the automatic stereotype activation was indeed strong and inescapable. More recently, Wang et al. (2015) showed evidence from an event-related-potential (EPR) study. Accordingly, stereotype activation is an unintentional—no intention to process a stimulus during a procedure—and automatic process. According to this study, the N400—negative-going-potential—can reflect stereotype activation and the ERPs demonstrated that people, even if they did not have the intention to activate a stereotype, accomplished this task automatically.

1.2.2. Automatic behavioral influences of stereotype activation

We can be influenced by a stereotype either explicitly by clearly formulating it, or implicitly by automatically activating without awareness the knowledge around a stereotype

that is stocked in a person’s long term memory (Förster & Liberman, 2007). Moreover, it has been shown empirically that stereotype activation can automatically influence people’s behavior (see Dijksterhuis & Bargh, 2001; Wheeler & Petty, 2001). This process is known as priming, which refers to the impact of previously activated knowledge structures—here stereotypes—on subsequent reactions (Fiedler, 2003). Priming occurs automatically, regardless of whether the prime is accessible to conscious awareness (Kihlstrom, 1987). There are three types of priming—goal priming, semantic priming, and procedural priming (Förster, Liberman, & Friedman, 2007). Stereotype priming is at least in the context of the present thesis part of semantic priming. To give an example, the “professor” stereotype semantically activates several associated features such as “being intelligent” which in turn semantically activate representations of more specific actions like “think and concentrate” which finally influence behavior (see Dijksterhuis & Bargh, 2001).

Furthermore, after stereotype priming, people’s behavior can be consistent with the primed stereotype—assimilation effect—or inconsistent with the primed stereotype—

contrast effect. Assimilation occurs if a subsequent behavior reflects the implication of the prime, whereas contrast occurs if the subsequent behavior reflects the opposite of the prime (cf. Herr, 1986). Theoretically both intentional and unintentional activation can lead to assimilation or contrast effects. However, the assimilation effect it is more frequently observed in the case of unintentional priming. For instance, Spencer, Steele, and Quinn (1999) showed that the intentional activation of the gender stereotype—especially the belief that women have low capacities in math—before a math task led female undergraduate students to a weaker math performance (assimilation effect). Moreover, Bargh, Chen, and Burrows (1996), in their third experiment, showed that individuals behaved more aggressively (assimilation effect) when primed with the African American stereotype. However, correction or overcorrection processes (contrast effect) mostly occur when awareness of a prime is high.

For instance, when the positive stereotype about Asians’ mathematical skills had been salient prior to performance on a math test, Asian-American women showed lowered math performance (contrast effect) under the pressure of high expectations (Cheryan &

Bodenhausen, 2000). Nevertheless, the unintentional and outside of awareness activation of a stereotype is the focus of the present thesis.

A mechanism to explain this automatic link between perception and behavior is outlined in the ideomotor theory proposed by Bargh and Chartrand (1999). This idea takes its

origin from Carpenter (1874; as cited in Wheeler & Petty, 2001) and James (1890) who introduced the notion of ideomotor action. The mechanism behind this idea is based on the

“common coding hypothesis” (Prinz, 1990), which describes how perceptual and motor representations—actions—are linked. More recently, Bargh and Chartrand (1999) have taken up this ideomotor theory by broadening it to perception. The perception of an individual belonging to a given category leads to the activation of corresponding stereotyped representations, including behavioral representations. According to the authors, these behavioral representations, once activated, automatically influence behavior. Therefore, priming constructs stored in memory (i.e., stereotypes) can produce corresponding effects on behavior. However, stereotype activation does not always follow this perception-action link.

Stereotypes may also motivate goal-directed behavior in accordance to the goals of the respective social group (Aarts et al., 2005). As stated by these authors, goals are part of the representation of social groups and thus priming—even without awareness—of social groups can automatically activate the pursuit of specific goals of that social group. For instance, in their first study, implicit priming of the social group “nurses” made participants to automatically pursue the goal associated with this group—helping people—manifested in participants’ volition to provide their feedback at the end of the experimental session.

Automaticity effects on behavior due to this common coding process for perception and action has also been shown in goal priming. Aarts and Dijksterhuis (2000) demonstrated that the mental representation of a previous well-established behavior—habits—can automatically exert an influence on a future behavior. Accordingly, if, for example, an association between a goal and a specific action has been previously established, such as to use a bike (action) to go to the workplace (goal), automatic use of the same means of transport will be more frequent in the future whenever the specific goal—go to work—will be activated.

Aarts, Custers, and Marien (2008) have also demonstrated that the mere activation of an action can influence motivation. Accordingly, implicitly activating behavioral exertion using words representing exertion is sufficient to influence the execution of a corresponding behavior.

More relevant for the present thesis, we will now focus on the stereotype of aging and on the effects of its activation.