THE EFFECTS OF STEREOTYPING ON IMPRESSION-FORMATION - CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON VIEWING RELIGIOUS PERSONS

We examined the effects of stereotyping on impression formation when e ncountering people dressed to represent a religious faith. We used sti mulus photographs of eight male and female models dressed casually and a second photograph of one male and one female model in religious att ire that was placed beside the control photos of models dressed casual ly. From each set of photographs, subjects selected a photo of the per son with whom they would associate the various positive personality tr aits suggested by our stimulus questions. Subjects were students from a U.S. Catholic school, a U.S. public school, and a Malaysian Muslim s chool. All the subjects attributed more of the positive traits to phot os of the models who were religiously attired than to photos of those who were casually dressed, but subjects from U.S. schools attributed m ore of the positive traits to the photos of religiously dressed models than did the subjects from the Malaysian school.