Social Category Bias
Social categorizations are "cognitive tools that segment, classify, and order the social environment, and thus enable the individual to undertake many forms of social action" (Taifel and Turner 1986). Further, social categorizations help an individual to define his own place in society (Taifel and Turner 1986). Social categories such as race, age and gender have been shown to be "highly salient" in decision-making (Norton, Vandello and Darley 2004, p. 819). One type of social categorization process is stereotyping, (Devine 1989), which serves to put individuals into groups of easily recognized members. Stereotypes have been found to influence the way people process information (Dunning and Sherman 1997), recall information (Yerbytz, Schadron, Leyens and Rocher 1994), and gather information (Trope and Thompson 1997).
Stereotypes can often lead people to make "tacit inferences" about the details of a situation (Dunning and Sherman 1997). Tacit inferences are made when people use stereotypes to inform them of additional information in a situation. For instance, Dunning and Sherman (1997) use the example of the statement "Some felt that the politician's statements were untrue," and propose that people will use stereotypes about politicians to make a tacit inference that the politician was lying, even though this is not stated in the passage. They use this same statement, yet they replace the politician with a physicist, and they propose that people are likely to assume that the physicist is telling the truth.
Once a person is exposed to a member of a certain social category, he awaits a sign to show that the person's actions are congruent with the norms for his or her social category (Dunning and Sherman 1997). But people are biased in their appraisal of whether an individual represents the social group with which he is associated. People overemphasize stereotyped actions when they are done by a stereotyped person and underemphasize the action when done by a non-stereotyped person (Dunning and Sherman 1997). In this way, stereotypes work additively with personal observations to increase the importance of the stereotyped action. Additionally Dunning and Sherman (1997) propose that inferences are made spontaneously, and people may not notice that they have integrated inferences into their account of a stereotyped action.
Although stereotypes can influence our judgment processes, research has shown that people are not willing to make decisions based on social group alone (Yzerbyt, Schadron, Leyens and Rocher 1994). A person who receives only race information about a target individual is not willing to determine whether this individual is intelligent, violent or poor, but this information is still activated in the mind. Stereotyping research shows that merely priming a stereotyped person will trigger stereotypes about that person (Garcia, Weaver, Moskowitz and Darley 2002). While we are uncomfortable judging a person based on expectations due to social category alone, we are still influenced by this information in later processing (Yzerbyt, Schadron, Leyens and Rocher 1994).
Thus, research on social category bias has shown that stereotypes about a social group can influence the techniques we use when processing, recalling and gathering information. The desire to favor the in-group or to see one's self in a favorable light can bias our information processing. But are there any real implications of social category bias on stereotyped groups? Research has shown that behaviors in violation of stereotypes are often penalized (Heilman and Chen 2005).