SOCIAL JUDGEABILITY AND THE DILUTION OF STEREOTYPES - THE IMPACT OF THE NATURE AND SEQUENCE OF INFORMATION

Social judgeability theory holds that people rely on naive theories wh en forming impressions. One rule is that perceivers should not judge o thers on the sole basis of their stereotypes. They may, however, misat tribute a category-based impression to the target information and fall prey to the illusion of being informed provided individuating evidenc e is present and the stereotype is not made salient. The authors sugge st that such a misattribution process contributes to the dilution of s tereotypes. Subjects rated a member of a stereotyped group either afte r or both before and after reception of target information. The author s predicted that pseudorelevant information (i.e., information nondiag nostic for the specific judgment bat diagnostic for many others) but n ot irrelevant information would lead to a stereotypical single judgmen t and dilute an initial stereotyped evaluation. Results confirmed the hypotheses and stress the role of implicit rules in social inference.