| Summary: | People often base
judgments on stereotypes, even when contradictory base-rate information is
provided. In a sample of 438 students from two state universities, we tested
several hypotheses regarding why people would prefer stereotype information
over base-rates when making judgments: A) People believe stereotype information
is more diagnostic than base-rate information, B) people find stereotype
information more salient than base-rate information, or C) even though people
have some intuitive access to base-rate information, they may need to engage in
deliberation before they can make full use of it, and often fail to do so. In
line with the deliberative failure account, and counter to the diagnosticity
account, we found that inducing deliberation by having people evaluate
statements supporting the use of base-rates increased the use of base-rate
information. Moreover, counter to the salience and diagnosticity accounts,
asking people to evaluate statements supporting the use of stereotypes
decreased reliance on stereotype information. Additionally, more numerate
subjects were more likely to make use of base-rate information.
|
|---|