Personalized versus generalized benefits of stereotype disconfirmation: Trade-offs in the evaluation of atypical exemplars and their social groups

We report two studies investigating the impact of how a stereotype-inconsis tent exemplar is categorized. In both studies, participants were presented with a description about a specific target and worked on different categori zation tasks. Categorization tasks eliciting an inclusion of the target int o the group category resulted in less stereotypic judgments about the group and in more stereotypic judgments about the target compared to categorizat ion tasks eliciting exclusion of the target from the category. The results Suggest that under exclusion conditions, a stereotype-inconsistent exemplar can increase stereotypic judgments about the group (Experiment 1). Experim ent 2 shows that these categorization effects are attenuated if participant s' processing motivation is increased at the encoding stage. The importance of a range of psychological variables that can influence the categorizatio n, and thus the impact, of atypical exemplars is discussed. (C) 2001 Academ ic Press.