Perceiving people as group members: The role of fit in the salience of social categorizations

TLDR

Fit is defined as the degree to which others’ attributes are perceived to correlate with group membership in a normatively consistent direction. The study hypothesizes that perceived social category membership becomes salient as a description and explanation of behavior when attitudes “fit” the categorization. Two experiments manipulated gender composition and agreement patterns (Expt 1) and faculty membership and agreement patterns (Expt 2) to create correlations between group membership and attitudes, measuring salience through stereotyping and attributions. The results of both experiments were largely consistent with predictions.

Abstract

It was hypothesized that the perceived social category membership of others becomes salient as a description and explanation of their behaviour where their attitudes ‘fit’ the social categorization. Fit is defined as the degree to which the attributes of others are perceived to correlate with group membership in a normatively consistent direction. In Expt 1 subjects viewed tape—slide presentations of six‐person groups where gender composition (‘solo’ or ‘collective’) and the pattern of agreement (‘deviance’ or ‘conflict’) were manipulated in a 2 × 2 design to produce a correlation between gender and attitudes in the solo/deviance and collective/conflict conditions. In Expt 2, subjects viewed videos of a group of three arts and three science students in which the normative consistency of an arts target person (‘consistent’ or ‘inconsistent’) and the pattern of agreement (‘consensus' or ‘conflict’ or ‘deviance’) were manipulated in a 2 × 3 design to produce a normative correlation between faculty membership and attitudes in the consistent/conflict condition. Salience was measured by stereotyping in terms of, and attributions to, social category memberships. The results of both experiments were largely consistent with predictions.