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Stereotypes: Suppression, Forgetting, and False Memory

This thesis presents four studies investigating (1) whether incidentally primed control-related words can attenuate the impact of activated stereotypes on subsequent evaluation of a target person, (2) the impact of motivated forgetting on the recall of stereotypically congruent and incongruent information, and (3) the impact of a directed forgetting instruction on the false recall and recognition of nonpresented stereotypical information. In three experiments, Study I showed that participants initially primed with the social category, immigrant, and subsequently primed with words that were evocative of control or self-control made less negative impression of a target displaying ambiguous behaviors than participants not exposed to such words. Study II, using a directed-forgetting paradigm, demonstrated in two experiments that participants subliminally primed with Swedish facial photographs who later studied stereotypically incongruent words roughly recalled an equal number of items regardless of the forget or remember instructions. Study III showed that participants primed with the social category, immigrant and then studied a list of stereotypically related and unrelated words falsely recognized more nonpresented stereotypical words when they were furnished with a forget than a remember instruction. Similarly, Study IV (Experiment 2) demonstrated that participants primed with the social category, immigrant, but not with a neutral category, falsely recalled more nonpresented stereotypical words when their cognitive capacity was depleted through a concurrent memory load task. The thesis presents a review and a discussion of some of the theoretical underpinnings of the extant literature on stereotyping and intergroup relations and of the social implications of the present findings.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-3340
Date January 2003
CreatorsAraya, Tadesse
PublisherUppsala universitet, Institutionen för psykologi, Uppsala : Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDoctoral thesis, comprehensive summary, info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
RelationComprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Social Sciences, 0282-7492 ; 122

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