Don’t stereotype, think different! Overcoming automatic stereotype activation by mindset priming

Sassenberg, Kai; Moskowitz, Gordon B.

doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2004.10.002

Cited by 193 publications

(158 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The present research extends previous findings examining the influence of different mindsets on stereotype activation (Sassenberg & Moskowitz, 2005). Specifically, this earlier research demonstrates that activating a broad mindset of creative thinking reduces the extent to which stereotypic associations are activated automatically.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

A tool for thought! When comparative thinking reduces stereotyping effects

Corcoran

Hundhammer

Mussweiler

2009

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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Stereotypes have pervasive, robust, and often unwanted effects on how people see and behave towards others. Undoing these effects has proven to be a daunting task. Two studies demonstrate that procedurally priming participants to engage in comparative thinking with a generalized focus on differences reduces behavioral and judgmental stereotyping effects. In Study 1, participants who were procedurally primed to focus on differences sat closer to a skinhead – a member of a negatively stereotyped group. In Study 2, participants primed on differences ascribed less gender stereotypic characteristics to a male and female target person. This suggests that comparative thinking with a focus on differences may be a simple cognitive tool to reduce the behavioral and judgmental effects of stereotyping

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

A tool for thought! When comparative thinking reduces stereotyping effects

Corcoran

Hundhammer

Mussweiler

2009

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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“…On the other hand, the findings on the cognitive concomitants of distrust from Schul andcolleagues (2004, 2008) and the findings presented here seem to converge on the notion that distrust makes people "think outside the box"-a tendency that is fairly incompatible with stereotyping. This notion is, for example, supported by findings that inducing a creative mindset can eliminate automatic stereotype activation (Sassenberg & Moskowitz, 2005). Given that distrust seems to elicit a mindset that shares at least some aspects of a creative mindset, this finding further corroborates the idea of reduced stereotyping in a distrust mindset.…”

Section: Implications For Distrust Researchsupporting

confidence: 62%

Suspicious spirits, flexible minds: When distrust enhances creativity.

Mayer¹,

Mussweiler²

2011

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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Intuitively, as well as in light of prior research, distrust and creativity appear incompatible. The social consequences of distrust include reluctance to share information, a quality detrimental to creativity in social settings. At the same time, the cognitive concomitants of distrust bear resemblance to creative cognition: Distrust seems to foster thinking about nonobvious alternatives to potentially deceptive appearances. These cognitive underpinnings of distrust hold the provocative implication that distrust may foster creativity. Mirroring these contradictory findings, we suggest that the social versus cognitive consequences of distrust have diverging implications for creativity. We address this question in Study 1 by introducing private/public as a moderating variable for effects of distrust on creativity. Consistent with distrust's social consequences, subliminal distrust (vs. trust) priming had detrimental effects on creative generation presumed to be public. Consistent with distrust's cognitive consequences, though, an opposite tendency emerged in private. Study 2 confirmed a beneficial effect of distrust on private creative generation with a different priming method and pointed to cognitive flexibility as the mediating process. Studies 3 and 4 showed increased category inclusiveness versus increased remote semantic spread after distrust priming, consistent with enhanced cognitive flexibility as a consequence of distrust. Taken together, these results provide evidence for the creativity-enhancing potential of distrust and suggest cognitive flexibility as its underlying mechanism.

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“…That is, the notion of interdependence implies treating data as a unified whole, whereas the notion of independence implies treating data as detached entities. A similar process (i.e., where a primed concept semantically implicates the ensuing type of processing) has been observed in an article by Sassenberg and Moskowitz (2005). They found that priming the concept of creativity (i.e., thinking in a nonstandard way) stimulated a general style of processing that entailed inhibiting automatically activated (e.g., stereotypic) associations.…”

Section: Ceiling Height and Type Of Processingsupporting

confidence: 58%

The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing That People Use

2007

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This article demonstrates that variations in ceiling height can prime concepts that, in turn, affect how consumers process information. We theorized that when reasonably salient, a high versus low ceiling can prime the concepts of freedom versus confinement, respectively. These concepts, in turn, can prompt consumers' use of predominately relational versus item-specific processing. Three studies found support for this theorizing. On a variety of measures, ceiling height-induced relational or item-specific processing was indicated by people's reliance on integrated and abstract versus discrete and concrete ideation. Hence, this research sheds light on when and how ceiling height can affect consumers' responses.T here appears to be widespread belief that ceiling height can affect the quality of indoor consumption experiences. Fischl and Gärling (2004) found that ceiling height ranked among the top three architectural details that influenced consumers' psychological well-being. Much anecdotal evidence also supports this view. A home development company that uses design ideas inspired by the guru of transcendental meditation maintains that homes with higher ceilings induce clearer and improved thinking, more energy, and better health among residents (Bivins 1997). Airplane manufacturers seem to concur that higher ceilings can enhance consumers' consumption experience, even if the increased height is only illusory. Such manufacturers use numerous techniques to engender the illusion of increased vertical space or volume in plane interiors, including repositioning overhead baggage bins, installing gently arched illuminated ceiling panels, and affixing wavy mirrors on the bulkheads beneath overhead storage bins (Lunsford and Michaels 2002).Despite such anecdotal evidence that ceiling height exerts *Joan Meyers-Levy is professor of marketing at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 ( jmeyerslevy@csom.umn.edu). Rui (Juliet) Zhu is assistant professor of marketing at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6G 3J3 ( juliet.zhu@sauder.ubc.ca). Both authors contributed equally to this work. Financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is gratefully acknowledged. Corresponding author: jmeyerslevy@csom.umn.edu. John Deighton served as editor and Gavan Fitzsimons served as associate editor for this article. Electronically published June 1, 2007a critical influence on consumers, we were unable to uncover any theory or research that explains how, when, and why ceiling height might exert an effect. This article seeks to address this issue by investigating the thesis that ceiling height may affect the very manner in which consumers process information and thus how they respond to products. To illustrate, suppose that you were shopping for a sleek new coffee-table and paused to evaluate how sleek one of the contenders truly appeared to be. We propose that different types of concepts might be activated or pr...

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Don’t stereotype, think different! Overcoming automatic stereotype activation by mindset priming

Cited by 193 publications

References 27 publications

A tool for thought! When comparative thinking reduces stereotyping effects

A tool for thought! When comparative thinking reduces stereotyping effects

Suspicious spirits, flexible minds: When distrust enhances creativity.

The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing That People Use

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