SOCIAL CATEGORIZATION, FOCUS OF ATTENTION AND JUDGMENTS OF GROUP OPINIONS

Social categorization was hypothesized to affect memory for attitude s tatements from social groups in such a way that recall would be better for arguments congruent with prior expectations about source group op inions. As a consequence, perceptions of group opinions based on this biased recall of arguments (memory-based judgments) were expected to b e more expectancy-congruent than judgements of group opinions that wer e formed during argument exposure (on-line judgements). To test these predictions, two experiments were conducted in which subjects were exp osed to an equal number of supporting and opposing arguments concernin g entrance exams. In Expt 1 it was suggested that the arguments origin ated from a group which subjects expected to be opposed to entrance ex ams, whereas in Expt 2 in half of the conditions it was suggested that the arguments originated from a group which subjects expected to be s upporting entrance exams. Before argument exposure, subjects received processing instructions (judgemental focus) that would either prevent subjects from forming on-line judgment of group opinions or induce the m to form such on-line opinion judgements. In addition to the manipula tion of judgemental focus, the delay between argument exposure and jud gement assessment was varied for exploratory purposes. Results showed that argument recall was affected by both prior expectations and own a ttitudes, although the former effect was moderated by the induced judg emental focus. As predicted, group opinion judgements were more expect ancy-congruent when they could be assumed to be memory-based than when they were reached on-line. Implications for the study of social group perceptions and stereotypes are discussed.