Inclusion and Exclusion: Implications for Stereotypic Judgments of Groups and Individuals

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2004
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Haverford College. Department of Psychology
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Thesis
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eng
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Abstract
This paper presents a broad overview of various models of the judgment process, in an effort to place the present research within a larger theoretical context. Particular attention is paid to theories proposed by Parducci, Kahneman and Miller, Martin, Schwarz and Bless, Stapel and Koomen, and Mussweiler. The present research aimed to extend the prior finding that categorization of a moderately atypical exemplar as either within or without a group affects subsequent evaluations of both the group and the exemplar, but in opposite ways (Bless, Schwarz, Bodenhausen and Thiel, 2001). In this prior study, both assimilation and contrast effects were found. The present research, a methodologically similar study to Bless et al., employed a new method of presenting exemplar information (i.e., through film clips), intended to increase the ecological validity of the study, allowing participants to gather exemplar information from both auditory and visual domains. As well, the present research utilized a stereotyped group (i.e., the elderly) not used in the previous research. The results of this research did not support the main hypothesis. While people did evaluate the exemplar and the group differently, such evaluative differences were not the effect of differential categorization of the exemplar. It is hypothesized that the lack of empirical support for the main effects may have been due to the fact that the manipulation of the dependent variable was weak; alternately, the measure of the dependent variable may not have been effective. One strong and surprising--although interesting--interaction did emerge from the data analyses: an interaction between the order in which the targets were evaluated, and the evaluations of the targets themselves. Specifically, when the exemplar was evaluated first, evaluations of the exemplar and group were contrasted away from each other. It is suggested that this finding may be able to be accounted for by several factors--such as distinctiveness and category width--presented in prior judgment theories.
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