Stereotype activation is unintentional: Behavioural and event-related potenials evidence

Pei Wang; Ya-Ping Yang; Chen-Hao Tan; Xiang-Xia Zhao; Yong-He Liu; Chong-De Lin

doi:10.1002/ijop.12135

Stereotype activation is unintentional: Behavioural and event-related potenials evidence

Int J Psychol. 2016 Apr;51(2):156-62. doi: 10.1002/ijop.12135. Epub 2015 Jan 27.

Authors

Pei Wang¹, Ya-Ping Yang^{1

2}, Chen-Hao Tan¹, Xiang-Xia Zhao¹, Yong-He Liu¹, Chong-De Lin³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China.
² Department of Psychology, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China.
³ School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.

PMID: 25622795
DOI: 10.1002/ijop.12135

Abstract

In this study, a priming Stroop paradigm was used to determine whether stereotype activation is unintentional. Priming conditions (priming/no-priming) and the relationship between priming and target (consistent/inconsistent/no-relation) were the independent variables; accuracy, reaction time and N400 amplitude were used as dependent variables. The reaction time revealed that stereotype activation is, to some extent, unintentional. Furthermore, the event-related potenial (ERP) results showed that N400 amplitude was larger for inconsistent conditions than for consistent conditions. This result supported the notion that stereotype activation is an unintentional and automatic process.

Keywords: Automatic process; N400; Stereotype activation; Unintentional.

MeSH terms

Behavior*
Electroencephalography
Evoked Potentials*
Female
Humans
Male
Reaction Time / physiology
Stereotyping*
Young Adult