The present research examines whether individuation and categorization processes influence trust decisions about strangers at first and across repeated interactions. In a partial replication of the study reported by Cañadas et al. (2015), participants played an adaptation of the multi-round trust game paradigm and had to decide whether or not to cooperate with unknown partners. Gender (Study 1a) and ethnicity (Studies 1b, 2, and 3) served to create distinct social categories among the game partners, whose reciprocation rates were manipulated at group and individual levels. At the group level, two social groups (i.e., ingroup vs. outgroup) were associated with opposite reciprocation rates (i.e., high vs. low reciprocation rate). At the individual level, consistency was manipulated by altering the reciprocation rate of one out of four members of each social group. That is, there was one inconsistent individual in each group showing a pattern of reciprocation opposite to the group reciprocation rate. Our data, contrary to Cañadas et al.’s (2015) findings, suggested that ingroup partners were individuated given that participants made their decisions to cooperate with the trustees according to their individual reciprocation rate and independently of the group reciprocation rate. In contrast, decisions about outgroup partners (i.e., men in Study 1a and Blacks in Studies 1b, 2, and 3) were affected by category-based thinking. At the same time, in comparison with ingroup, greater cooperation was observed with ethnic outgroups but not with gender outgroups. The consistency of our results with the previous literature on social categorization and across the three experiments seems to indicate they are reliable, supporting the hypothesis that categorization and individuation processes guide trust decision-making, promoting individuation mainly for ingroup and categorization among outgroup members.

Abstract. We propose that reactance to threats to individual freedom can be broadened to include threats to group identity and its associated values and norms. In two studies we primed women and men with (counter) stereotypical roles and measured implicit activation of reactance versus acceptance goals, task persistence, and support for system justification beliefs and collective action. Although we found no direct evidence of reactance activation, men activated acceptance when primed with gender stereotypes, whereas women did not. Further, traditional women legitimize the system after counter-stereotypical exposure, whereas progressive women (feminist identifiers) persist more in solving a task stereotypically favoring men under these conditions (Study 1). Finally, nonsexist women show higher support for collective action after stereotypical exposure when threat to their identity is blatant (Study 2). We argue that reactions to identity threats depend on the content of that identity so that the specific form reactance takes may depend on the group norms being threatened.

In social contexts, aging is typically associated with a greater reliance on heuristics, such as categorical information and stereotypes. The present research examines younger and older adults’ use of individuating and age-based categorical information when gauging whether or not to trust unfamiliar targets. In an adaptation of the iterated Trust Game, participants had to predict the cooperative tendencies of their partners to earn economic rewards in first encounters – in a context in which they knew nothing about their partners, and across repeated interactions – in a context in which they could learn the individual cooperative tendency of each partner. In line with previous research, we expected all participants to rely on stereotypes in first encounters, and progressively learn to disregard stereotypes to focus on individuating behavioral cues across repeated interactions. Moreover, we expected older participants to rely more on social categories than younger participants. Our results indicate that overall, both the elderly and the young adopted an individuating approach to predict the cooperative behaviors of their partners across trials. However, older adults more consistently relied on gender (but not age) stereotypes to make cooperation decisions at zero acquaintance. The impact of context, motivation, and relevance of categorical information in impression formation is discussed.

Perceptual grouping leads to interference when target and distractors are integrated within the same percept. Cognitive control allows breaking this automatic tendency by focusing selectively on target information. Thus, interference can be modulated either by goal-directed mechanisms or by physical features of stimuli that help to segregate the target from distractors. In three experiments, participants had to respond to the left-right direction of a central arrow, flanked by two arrows on each side. Sometimes, instructions requested to also stay vigilant for detecting an infrequent vertical/horizontal displacement of the target, thus loading working memory. Although it has been usually shown that concurrent working memory load hinders target selection, the present research provides evidence that interference may either increase or decrease depending on whether dual tasking draws attention to the grouping (horizontal displacement) or to an orthogonal dimension (vertical displacement), revealing counterintuitive benefits of working memory load. Public Significance StatementCognitive control mechanisms help us to focus our attention only on the relevant stimuli of the environment while ignoring irrelevant information, to achieve the goals demanded by the task performed at a specific moment. Although cognitive control is usually impaired by the simultaneous performance of a secondary task, some studies have found the opposite result or have failed to find any effect of secondary task at all. In the present study, we observed that if the secondary task promotes the grouping of relevant and irrelevant stimuli, then cognitive control is indeed hindered. However, if the secondary task incidentally helps to segregate the relevant stimuli from the irrelevant ones, then cognitive control improves. Therefore, we demonstrate that the difficulty posed by having to perform two tasks simultaneously can be considerably reduced, depending in particular on the set of instructions kept in mind.