THE ROLE OF MEMORY BIASES IN STEREOTYPE MAINTENANCE

It has frequently been proposed that stereotypes are self-maintaining at least in part because people tend to better remember expectancy-con firming (versus expectancy-disconfirming) information about social gro ups. This memory bias is assumed to occur because stereotype-consisten t behaviours and traits are more easily associated with the social gro up label in memory, and thus are more readily activated from memory wh en thinking about the group or about group members. The results of 26 experiments that studied memory for information describing members of existing social groups were meta-analytically investigated to assess t he validity of this hypothesis. As predicted, this analysis revealed a n overall consistency effect for both free recall memory and for recog nition memory measures that were not controlled for guessing. Analysis of relevant moderating variables suggested that these effects were du e to more strongly developed mental associations between expectancy-co nsistent (versus -inconsistent) information and the group label. Resul ts are discussed in terms of their implications for stereotype mainten ance, and for the process of stereotyping.