Myron Rothbart

University of Oregon | UO · Department of Psychology

Labels exert strong influence on perception and judgment. The present experiment examines the possibility that such effects may persist even when labels are abandoned. Participants judged the similarity of pairs of silhouette drawings of female body types, ordered on a continuum from very thin to very heavy, under conditions where category labels w...

Three experiments examined the effect of verbal labels on the perception of category members. Participants were presented with silhouette drawings of female body types, ordered on a continuum from very thin to very heavy, and asked to judge the degree of similarity between pairs, as well as absolute weight of each silhouette. The presence/absence o...

There is considerable evidence that predictions about others’ behavior are anchored to comparable judgments about the self. There is also strong evidence that while self-judgments predict ingroup members’ behavior more strongly than outgroup members, the correlation between self and group remains positive for both ingroups and outgroups (Robbins &...

Image and RealityIndividuation and DecategorizationGroup Boundaries and Stereotype ChangeReferences

Inter-group perception was examined in a context characterized by positive interdependence and extensive contact across group boundaries. The attitudes and beliefs of the woodwind, brass, and percussion sections of a university marching band were examined using measures of ingroup favoritism, outgroup homogeneity, and 12 scales assessing adult temp...

The question addressed by this chapter is: How do we represent, psychologically, the relations among overlapping and inclusive categories, and how does this representation influence our perception of the nature of social categories and the modifiability of stereotypic beliefs associated with those categories? We address this broad question by consi...

Nisbett, Zukier and Lemley presented evidence for a "dilution effect," in which information nonpredictive of a stimulus person's behavior "watered down" or diluted the predictive value of categorical information diagnostic of that behavior Two experiments suggest, however that nondiagnostic information influences prediction by altering the perceive...

Three experiments examined the effects of arbitrarily placed boundaries on judged similarity between pairs of stimulus persons. Subjects in Experiments 1 and 2 rated the similarity of applicants for a job in which three category labels (Ideal, Acceptable, and Marginal) were superimposed on the composite scores of applicants based on measures releva...

Four studies tested the hypothesis that category labels are more likely to prime retrieval of typical than atypical category members, an assumption critical to Rothbart and John's (1985) view of stereotype change. The first two experiments examined the use of a category name to retrieve category members in both a laboratory and field setting. In Ex...

Research relevant to Rothbart and John's (1985) [Journal of Social Issues, 41, 81–104] model of stereotype change is examined. Contrary to predictions from the contact hypothesis, the attributes of category members frequently fail to generalize to the category as a whole. To account for this lack of generalization, Rothbart and John proposed that j...

In-group favoritism in the minimal group setting was hypothesized to be a function of 2 processes: a tendency to base in-group judgments on the self (self-anchoring) and a tendency to assume 1 group to be opposite of the other (differentiation). In the first 3 experiments, in which the order of rating the self and target group was varied, was categ...

Participants were instructed to organize information about group members either by distinguishing stereotype-consistent from stereotype-inconsistent individuals (subtyping instructions), by dividing the individuals into multiple groups on the basis of similarities and differences (subgrouping instructions), or with no explicit organizing instructio...

This study examines the accentuation of perceived intercategory differences. In Experiment 1, 2 sets of trait adjectives were presented--a neutral set and a set of either favorable traits or unfavorable traits. Ss estimated the mean favorability of each set. The mean favorability of the neutral set was then increased or decreased by adding new trai...

We examined the amenability of abstractions of categories to new and relevant information. In Experiment 1, Ss formed impressions of 2 sets of numbers by periodically estimating the cumulative means of each set. During the 1st half of the procedure, the 2 means were mathematically stable. During the 2nd half of the procedure, the mean of 1 set was...

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that judgments about the attributes of categories are disproportionately based on the characteristics of exemplars that best fit the category. In the first 2 experiments, subjects were presented with good and bad exemplars of categories with defining attributes (rectangles, triangles, pentagons, and ellipses)...

In three experiments, we explored the effects of categorical information (stereotypes) and case information (traits or behaviors) on judgments about an individual's characteristics. Subjects judged a target person's aggressiveness on the basis of a description containing both a broad social category and specific case information. In Experiment 1, t...

In-group and out-group members were predicted to differ in the judged efficacy of coercion and conciliation as social influence strategies, with coercion perceived as relatively more effective than conciliation by outgroup rather than ingroup members. In Experiment 1, all subjects read a description of a conflict between two hypothetical nations, w...

Sixty-five licensed clinical psychologists independently diagnosed 18 written case histories on the basis of 10 DSM-III categories. The results showed that females were rated significantly more histrionic than males exhibiting identical histrionic symptoms. There was no comparable sex bias to diagnose males showing antisocial pathology as more anti...

Argues that trait adjectives vary in how easily they are confirmed or disconfirmed as descriptive of an individual or group. An analysis of the confirmability and disconfirmability of trait descriptive adjectives is proposed in which traits are seen as varying in (a) the number of occasions that allow for confirming or disconfirming behaviors, (b)...

Reviews the book, Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Psychology: A Formalization of Freud's Earliest Theory by Cornelis Wegman (1985). Wegman's book is an attempt to achieve Freud's goal by using modern concepts from the field of information processing rather than from neurophysiology. It is not simply a historical exercise in clarifying an obscure or ar...

The effects of intergroup contact on stereotypic beliefs, it is argued, depend upon (1) the potential susceptibility of those beliefs to disconfirming information and the degree to which the contact setting “allows” for disconfirming events, and (2) the degree to which disconfirming events are generalized from specific group members to the group as...

Examined the likelihood that only a portion of the relevant information will be accessed when people consider the contingency between 2 variables, thus resulting in erroneous judgments. Inasmuch as people estimate contingency largely on the basis of frequency rather than probability information, severe imbalance in the marginal frequencies of eithe...

In this article, a general associative storage and retrieval theory of person memory is proposed, and seven experiments that test various aspects of the theory are reported. Experiment 1 investigated memory for behavioral information that is congruent with, incongruent with, or irrelevant to a prior impression. The results indicated that incongruen...

In order for language to achieve its communicative function, it is essential that a given symbol be able to evoke a similar psychological representation across diverse individuals. Although many symbols or words succeed in eliciting highly similar meanings among different people, there is an important domain in which the discrepancies in meanings a...

Explored the hypothesis that in-group members perceive their own group as more variegated and complex than do out-group members (the out-group homogeneity principle). In Exps I and II, 168 men and 171 women estimated the proportion of men or women who would endorse a variety of personality/attitude items that varied on stereotypic meaning (masculin...

Three experiments with 91 college students examined the effects of social categorization on memory for behaviors associated with in-group and out-group members. In Exp I, it was predicted and found that social categorization generates the implicit expectancy that the in-group engages in more favorable and/or less unfavorable behaviors than does the...

To examine the effects of stereotypic expectancies on memory for behavioral events that confirm or disconfirm these expectancies, subjects were all presented with the same set of 50 behavior descriptions, where each behavior was associated with the name of one member of a group of 50 men. The 50 items consisted of 17 intelligent, 17 friendly, 3 non...

When subjects are presented with information about the attributes of individuals and are then asked to make judgments about the characteristics of the group composed of those individuals, the group impression may depend on the way in which data on individuals are organized in memory. Experiment 1 demonstrated that under conditions of low memory loa...

To assess the effects of affective orientation on the judgment of facial attriutes, 165 subjects were asked to make judgments of the attributes of each of two faces. For each face, subjects were either given no information about the person in the photo, or were given biographical information connoting either a favorable or unfavorable personality....

To examine the effects of learned helplessness on tasks used to assess the aftereffects of stress, 42 internal and external undergraduates (selected by scores on a brief form of Rotter's Internal–External Locus of Control Scale) were pretreated with contingent or noncontingent nonnoxious reinforcement using a yoking procedure to control for amount...

As part of a larger study of birth order, sex of child, and mother—child interaction, mothers were asked to supervise their child's performance on memory and puzzle tasks. Subjects were 56 5-year-old boys and girls and their mothers, half with a same-sex older sibling, half with a same-sex younger sibling. Mothers showed no differences in spontaneo...

Conducted an experiment with 88 female undergraduates to examine the motivating effects of fear-arousing events. A laboratory simulation procedure was developed to assess the determinants of attention and responsivity to remote (low likelihood) threatening events. Ss could divert their attention from an affectively neutral task to attend to a dange...

Presented a tape recorded persuasive communication to 120 college and high school students while a photograph of a man identified as the speaker was projected onto a screen. 3 groups of ss listened to the communication in the presence of either (a) a photograph of an attractive communicator, (b) a photograph of an unattractive communicator, or (c)...

Constructed a simulated classroom situation with 13 female university seniors and 52 high school students. Teacher trainees discussed academic material with 4 students, 2 of whom were arbitrarily designated as "lacking in intellectual potential." Measures were obtained of (a) the amount of attention given to the high- and low-expectation students,...

Contrasted attituded of 191 English Canadians living in Quebec with attitudes of a comparable, nonthreatened group living outside of French Canada. Measures were obtained of: (a) perceived causes of French Canadian dissatisfaction, (b) perceived strength of the separatist movement, (c) amount of information regarding separatism, (d) degree of oppos...

Made a comparison between the confidence of 23 undergraduates either predicting the outcome of an uncertain event or postdicting the outcome of the same event. Using a procedure in which Ss rolled a die and bet on the outcome, it was found that Ss predicting the outcome before the die was rolled bet more money and reported greater confidence in bei...

[describes] work on the cognitive-perceptual aspects of intergroup relations / [argues] that cognitive-perceptual processes are potent, indeed, and permeate the assumptions underlying the most lethal form of intergroup conflict—our current strategy regarding the use of nuclear weapons is there a clear distinction between realistic conflict theori...

review the contributions of social cognition to the study of intergroup relations and the prospects for ameliorating intergroup tensions / argue that the conceptualization of the limited-capacity processor who needs to simplify the complex stimulus world is central to an understanding of intergroup perception and intergroup conflict / argue that re...

re-examine a very old social psychological question: why do our labels for social categories possess such extraordinary power / the argument we propose in this paper utilizes a distinction between 'natural kind' categories (such as birds, fish, gold, and daffodils) and 'human artifact' categories (such as chair, bicycle, sweater, and house) / argue...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Stanford University, 1966. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-62). Microfilm.

INVESTIGATED THE WAY IN WHICH SS ADMINISTER REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS WHEN ATTEMPTING TO MODIFY ANOTHER'S PERFORMANCE OVER A SERIES OF TRIALS. 3 AREAS WERE EXPLORED: (1) THE EFFECTS OF S'S MOTIVATIONAL LEVEL ON THE AMOUNT OF PUNISHMENT ADMINISTERED TO A "WORKER," (2) THE EFFECTS OF THE WORKER'S INCREASES AND DECREASES IN PERFORMANCE ON S'S SUBSEQUENT...