Here are a few details about the study. We altered eight of the original sentences in the Memory Test to be more consistent with the stereotype of the person contained in them, like the politician and lying example we described earlier. We labelled these sentences stereotype-consistent alterations.
We altered another eight sentences in the Memory Test to be inconsistent with the relevant stereotype. For example, one original sentence we showed you was:
We predicted that people for the most part would think of men as being emotionally nonexpressive. As such, the alteration of the sentence was counter to the usual stereotype of men.
We predicted that people would make more errors (or false alarms) on the memory test when they saw stereotype-consistent alterations of the sentences than when they saw stereotype-inconsistent ones.
How did you do? See how many of the stereotype-consistent and stereotype-inconsistent sentences you (mistakenly) said you had seen before.
Luke had a problem with expressing his emotions.
We changed that to:
Luke had a problem with expressing his emotions too much.
We predicted that people would think of men, like Luke, as being emotionally unexpressive. Thus, the alteration of the sentence is the opposite of the usual stereotype. Alterations like this we labelled as stereotype-inconsistent alterations.
Stereotype-Consistent Alterations
Stereotype-Inconsistent Alterations
Results Summary
