When stereotype disconfirmation is a personal threat: How prejudice and prevention focus moderate incongruency effects

For people with a prevention focus, stereotype disconfirmation is a threat to efficient and effective self-regulation when the disconfirmation is disc repant from stereotypic beliefs they endorse. This produces negative emotio ns, vigilance motivation, and higher attention to both the disconfirming ta rget and its background location. Within a typical person memory paradigm, participants had to form an impression about a target person who was either male or female and was described by gender-stereotype congruent, incongrue nt, and irrelevant attributes. Later, they were asked to recollect the info rmation in a background-sensitive recognition test. Participants' regulator y focus strength and modern sexism were ase sed. As predicted, the higher t he combination of both prevention focus and prejudice the better the memory for both the target and its background information for incongruent items. In addition, the higher this combination, the more intense were agitation-r elated emotions (i.e., worry and tension), and the stronger was the desire To meet the person. Implications for both the person memory and stereotype literatures are discussed.