Seeing is not stereotyping: the functional independence of categorization and stereotype activation.
Social categorization has been viewed as necessarily resulting in stereotyping, yet extant research suggests the two processes are differentially sensitive to task manipulations. Here, we simultaneously test the degree to which race perception and stereotyping are conditionally automatic. Participants performed a sequential priming task while either explicitly attending to the race of face primes or directing attention away from their semantic nature. We find a dissociation between the perceptual encoding of race and subsequent activation of associated stereotypes, with race perception occurring in both task conditions, but implicit stereotyping occurring only when attention is directed to the race of the face primes. These results support a clear conceptual distinction between categorization and stereotyping and show that the encoding of racial category need not result in stereotype activation.
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0345, USA.
Tiffany A
TA
Ito
Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, 35131, Italy.
Silvia
S
Tomelleri
D044383:Black People; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D005145:Face; D000066499:Facial Recognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D044469:Racial Groups; D012938:Social Perception; D013240:Stereotyping; D044465:White People; D055815:Young Adult
implicit stereotyping; racial categorization