D. Vanknippenberg et al., PROCESSING GOAL AS MODERATOR OF IN-GROUP-SERVING ILLUSORY CORRELATIONS, British journal of social psychology, 36, 1997, pp. 427-441
This study tested the hypothesis that the effect of in-group-serving e
xpectancy biases on memory and judgment is moderated by processing goa
l. In-group-serving biases in both recall and judgments (estimated fre
quencies of desirable and undesirable in-group and our-group behaviour
, evaluative ratings) were hypothesized to be stronger when processing
goal interfered with online impression formation compared with when a
ttention is focused on the formation of group impressions. This hypoth
esis was tested in an illusory correlation experiment in which in-grou
p-serving expectancy bias and infrequency bias (Hamilton & Gifford, 19
76) could be studied simultaneously. Participants read statements desc
ribing desirable and undesirable behaviour of members of the in-group
and out-group, while the in-group held either minority or majority sta
tus, while participants were instructed either to form group impressio
ns or to memorize the information. As predicted, memorizing compared w
ith impression formation resulted in in-group-serving illusory correla
tions in recall and frequency estimates and in in-group bias in group
evaluations. Infrequency of occurrence affected recall and judgments i
rrespective of processing goal. The implications of these results for
social stereotyping are discussed.