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When Do Stereotypes Come to Mind and When Do They Color Judgment?
A Goal-Based Theoretical Framework for Stereotype Activation and
Application
Ziva Kunda and Steven J. Spencer
University of Waterloo
The authors describe a theoretical framework for understanding when people interacting with a member
of a stereotyped group activate that group’s stereotype and apply it to that person. It is proposed that both
stereotype activation and stereotype application during interaction depend on the strength of compre-
hension and self-enhancement goals that can be satisfied by stereotyping one’s interaction partner and on
the strength of one’s motivation to avoid prejudice. The authors explain how these goals can promote and
inhibit stereotype activation and application, and describe diverse chronic and situational factors that can
influence the intensity of these goals during interaction and, thereby, influence stereotype activation and
application. This approach permits integration of a broad range of findings on stereotype activation and
application.
As one interacts with a member of a stereotyped group—for
example, an African American, a woman, a doctor—the stereotype
of that group may or may not come to mind. When it does, it may
or may not color one’s impression of that person. These two
processes have been labeled stereotype activation, that is, the
extent to which a stereotype is accessible in one’s mind, and
stereotype application, that is, the extent to which one uses a
stereotype to judge a member of the stereotyped group. We ex-
amine what determines the activation and the application of ste-
reotypes and how these two processes relate to one another. We
propose that both the activation and the application of stereotypes
depend on three kinds of goals: comprehension goals, self-
enhancement goals, and the motivation to avoid prejudice.
1
We
explain how these goals can promote and inhibit the activation and
the application of stereotypes, and describe situational and chronic
factors that can trigger these goals and enable their execution.
Conceptualizing and Assessing Stereotype Activation and
Stereotype Application
There has always been a clear theoretical distinction between
the accessibility of knowledge structures such as stereotypes and
their use in judgment. Category accessibility was conceived as a
state of perceptual readiness that makes the category available for
use in judgments such as identification, categorization, and infer-
ence about category members (Bruner, 1957). Empirically, how-
ever, the distinction between the increased accessibility of catego-
ries and their increased use in judgment has sometimes been
muddied because categories manifest their accessibility through
their impact on judgment. Therefore, increases in the accessibility
of categories have typically been inferred from increases in their
use (e.g., Srull & Wyer, 1979; for a review, see Higgins, 1989).
However, the extent of stereotype activation cannot always be
inferred from stereotype application. When perceivers apply a
stereotype to a member of the stereotyped group, it can be assumed
that they have also activated the stereotype, because a stereotype
cannot be applied without first being activated. But when perceiv-
ers do not apply a stereotype, it cannot be assumed that they have
not activated it either, because people do not always apply their
activated stereotypes (Gilbert & Hixon, 1991). For example, per-
ceivers who encounter an Asian American woman may activate
the Asian American stereotype, thereby experiencing heightened
accessibility of stereotypic traits such as shy and intelligent, but
they may refrain from applying this activated stereotype to this
individual, that is, they may not judge her as especially shy or
intelligent. People may avoid applying an activated stereotype
because they are motivated to avoid prejudice (cf. Devine, 1989;
Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986). Nevertheless, its increased activation
may still be detectable through implicit measures that tap other
judgments that the perceivers cannot control or that they are not
motivated to control because they do not realize that their reactions
can reveal stereotype activation (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995).
Several implicit measures of stereotype activation have been
developed. Increased accessibility of stereotypic attributes can be
revealed by faster identification of stereotypic words (Kawakami,
1
We view the terms motivation to avoid prejudice and goal of avoiding
prejudice as interchangeable. We use motivation throughout because that is
the term most commonly used in other articles on this topic (e.g., Dunton
& Fazio, 1997; Plant & Devine, 1998).
This research was supported by Grants 410-2002-0964 and 410-99-0993
from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and
Grant 138483-98 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research
Council of Canada. We thank the stereotype discussion group at the
University of Waterloo for many helpful contributions to the development
of these ideas, and Christian Jordan and Mark Zanna for comments on an
earlier version of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to either
Ziva Kunda or Steven J. Spencer, Department of Psychology, Univer-
sity of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada. E-mail: zkunda@
watarts.uwaterloo.ca or sspencer@watarts.uwaterloo.ca
Psychological Bulletin Copyright 2003 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
2003, Vol. 129, No. 4, 522–544 0033-2909/03/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.129.4.522
522
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