Citation

Peters MJV, Jelicic M, Merckelbach H. Leg. Crim. Psychol. 2006; 11(2): 327-336.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, British Psychological Society, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1348/135532505X74055

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Purpose. This study examined whether participants' memories of a racially neutral crime story are influenced by stereotypes and the instruction to suppress stereotypes while reading the crime story. We expected that participants who saw a photograph of a foreign group (negative stereotype prime) and were given the instruction to suppress stereotypes before reading a crime story would make significantly more stereotype-consistent errors on a recognition test than participants who received a neutral prime and a suppression instruction.Methods. Participants were 88 undergraduate students (59 women) who were randomly allocated to the cells of a 2 (negative stereotype versus neutral prime)×2 (thought suppression versus control) between-subjects design. The dependent variables were recognition of accurate items, stereotype-consistent items and confabulation items.Results. The critical stereotype × suppression interaction was statistically significant for false recognition of non-presented stereotype-consistent items. Simple effect analyses of the suppression condition showed that participants who were primed with a negative stereotype made more stereotype-consistent recognition errors than those who had been exposed to a neutral prime.Conclusions. Stereotypes not only make cognitive processing easier, but might also contribute to recognition errors when people do what they often are told to do in the legal arena: suppress stereotypical thinking.

Language: en